“Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…”

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep.

Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.

Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband’s mood.

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care?

If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it’s own reward?

Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.

Why do you complain of your fate when you could so easily change it?

The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him.

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool.

What is more immoral than war?

So much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

Even if you forget everything else I want you to always remember that you are a person of value, and you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.

If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.

He wasn’t flashy and he wouldn’t score you goals. But he was hard and skilful and gave you everything he had. More than that he was totally honest.

Coffee is the highlight of my day. After coffee everything is downhill.

Jesus didn’t accomplish everything so that you could accomplish nothing.

Martina and I went through a very bad five years. Everything’s very good between us now, but it was a long haul.

Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

There was nobody else around, and I made my first frame, and I forgot to focus the camera. The second frame was a little more in focus… then just for a second, while everything was open, the busboy looked up, and he had this look in his eye.