“You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.”

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.

I mean they don’t seem able to love us just the way we are. They don’t seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more.

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

How long should a man’s legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

I’m one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.

I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

I just hope that one day – preferably when we’re both blind drunk – we can talk about it.

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.

The words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.

I could never, ever talk to my father. I really loved him, but we couldn’t talk about anything together. There was this really British thing that being even remotely emotional was absolutely verboten.

Your first realization when you become an important person is that all day and all night, whatever the circumstances, people want to hear you talk about yourself.

I think the best day will be when we no longer talk about being gay or straight. It’s not a gay wedding, it’s just a wedding. It’s not a gay marriage, it’s just a marriage.

God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.

You can use martial arts to tell a different story. Ang Lee used martial arts in ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ to talk about love.

When I speak My lips feel cold – The autumn wind.

I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters – people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them – not one – stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.