If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?

I find I have to give myself a day when I just shut myself off and do nothing but read.

I like L.A., but I think what's changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.

I love films. If I'd known how to get into or do it from the word go, I would have done that.

I'm ashamed to say the first play I saw at the Royal Court was mine.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

It's great to get out of the study and work with real living and breathing people.

Often I think the novels I read won't make very good movies - I better not say which I'm looking at for potential films! - but it's nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

There was a moment in the early '80s when I wanted to work on films and wanted to live in L.A.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

I think theres something degrading about having a husband for a rival. Its humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

The generic Canadian style of illustration is different from the generic American style.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

All we're getting from the Democratic majority in Congress and from this White House is more bailouts, more spending, more planned stimulus, more deficits and debt, and the American people have had it.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

But the Congress has made the determination that certain kinds of information can be protected even though the American people may want to have access to information.

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

I was on TV for almost sixteen weeks during American Idol. It's at the point now where it's old.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican-I'm an American, I'm a human.

Long after this wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing.

The time has come for the American government to recognize the damage that has occurred to our economy, and to take firm action to curtail what I believe is both unfair and illegal foreign competition.

The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

I mean, the reality is unemployment today - over 14 million Americans are unemployed. That's exactly what it was a year ago. I mean, this - the American people know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.