“Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’re not honest”

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

I say money has no value; it’s just the way you spend it.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

Success is feminine and like a woman, if you cringe before her, she will override you

No one individual can tell the truth.

Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.

You can’t beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don’t even try to.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

And sure enough, even waiting will end…if you can just wait long enough.

All l mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way.

We are more than just flesh and bones. There’s a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can’t measure. We can’t find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it’s there.

Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

When you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up. Once you get to the point where Hollywood sees that you create results, then the demand for you becomes higher.

In 1967, I had my first black girlfriend, and a lot more ever since then. I just don’t understand racism.

The Irish seem to have more fire about them than the Scots.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

I’ve had a lot more success helping guys then just being punitive.