“Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.”

God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.

Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.

I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted,

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.

In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.

Even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.

One must feel sorry for those who have strange tastes, but never insult them. Their wrong is Nature’s too; they are no more responsible for having come into the world with tendencies unlike ours than are we for being born bandy-legged or well-proportioned.

The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.

Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?

Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.

Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime.

Either kill me or take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.

One must do violence to the object of one’s desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.

According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

My movies are always being played on television, I’m very well known and all that stuff.

In fact, so as not to succumb to an obscurantist theory of creation ex nihilo, we must accept that an event is nothing but a part of a given situation, nothing but a fragment of being.

I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn’t fall down.

Before I get out of bed, I am saying thank you. I know how important it is to be thankful.

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.

I don’t like a lot of things like [Iraq], I never did. Being in a position of celebrity and having your words carry such unnatural weight…

So I’ve been doing everything that has to do with being next to them, close to them.

I’m expressing something that I feel is a way to exercise my talent and help communicate a role as a human being in a movie, I will do that.