“I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.”

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

German is of stone, limestone, pudding stone, marble, granite even, and so to a considerable degree is English, whereas French is bronze and gives out a metallic resonance with tones that neither German nor English tolerate.

Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.

We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often”.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die.

International affairs will be placed on a better footing when it is understood that there is no way of punishing a people for the crimes of its rulers.

No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art…our world would have remained a jungle.

Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.

Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.

As I got warmed up, and felt perfectly at home in talk, I heard myself boasting, lying, exaggerating. Oh, not deliberately, far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk, and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.

When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.

I never felt that there was anything enviable in youth. I cannot recall that any of us, as youths, admired our condition to excess or had a desire to prolong it.

I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.

Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm.

Reality television, anybody can be a star at any minute.

A fool will study for twenty or thirty years and learn how to do something, but a wise man will study for twenty or thirty minutes and become an expert. In this world, it isn’t ability that counts, but authority.

The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes.

How can I regain even for a minute the feeling of ample leisure I had during my early, my creative years? Then I seldom felt fussed, or hurried.

The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years.

I thought, “Wait a minute. That’s the perfect name.” That kind of freed up my year but that’s where the name came from.

If all we are allowed is hours, minutes, I want to be able to etch each of them on to my memory with exquisite clarity so that I can recall them at moments like this, when my very soul feels blackened.