“The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it.”

Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real.

There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room.

Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today.

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.

Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

You are born modern, you do not become so.

I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again.

It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia.

The world is not dialectical – it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

But I didn’t think about this beforehand. I just went ahead and did it, and that’s the way it turned out. So I guess there are lots of paradoxes which I’ll leave for other people to unscramble.

It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead.

I think that Hollywood should also be influenced by directors from Hong Kong. You see how Quentin Tarantino is really the example of how you can develop, and how you can go ahead if you accept the existence of different cinematic cultures.

I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform.

To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.

Countrymen, the task ahead is great indeed, and heavy is the responsibility; and yet it is a noble and glorious challenge.

You decided what you thought you’d like me to do, and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else does. You decided for me.