“It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.”

When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.

From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.

In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

Oh, it’s always the same,’ she sighed, ‘if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.

You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

Frank stared at him. “Unfair? You can breathe underwater and blow up glaciers and summon freaking hurricanes-and it’s unfair that I can be an elephant?” Percy considered. “Okay. I guess you got a point. But the next time I say you’re totally beast-” “Just shut up,” Frank said. “Please.” Percy cracked a smile.

Is it fair your life burns so short and bright? Death had asked. “No such thing as fair,” Frank told himself. “If I’m going to burn, it might as well be bright.

Nice creepy reptile,” Frank said, very aware of the driftwood in his coat pocket. “Nice poisonous, fire-breathing reptile.

Quite frankly, having an uninformed populace works extremely well, particularly when you have a media that doesn’t understand its responsibility and feels more like it’s an arm of a political party. They can really take advantage of an uninformed populace.

The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that’s still there – it’s preserved.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

I like, for instance, ‘Serpico.’ I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could – I could embody him. I could, you know.