The complex develops out of the simple.

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

The complex develops out of the simple.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.

I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.

I've always been a pretty hard worker. That's how I've written over a hundred books.

If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

What I wanted to do was to try to create a philosophy upon a completely new foundation.

When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books.

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.

Imagination should be used not to escape reality but to create it.

The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large of other writers a process of comparison with oneself with others discoveries of kinships gradual illumination of ones own potentialities.

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

It is my policy to deepen the Japan-U.S. alliance and to deepen security and economic relations as well as personal exchanges.

I'm a huge fan of Kate Beckinsale. Sigourney Weaver gets me excited. Angelina Jolie... There's just so many women that do 'tough' really well.

I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clintons willingness to go into a state she doesnt even live in and pretend to represent the people there. So I certainly wouldnt imitate it.

Traditionally with debut albums, labels insist on a face, so people know who you are.

People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.

I know a lot of people who have tremendous commercial success and they go directly for it. There's something that has always been difficult about that for me.

I'd say 'Codename Baboushka' has been a slightly more difficult process for me, but I think that's precisely because it's quite different to my usual fare. And even then, being difficult doesn't make me prefer it, or not, to anything else. I like a challenge.

Our interpretations of subjects are clouded by our intellects.

Winter bites with its teeth or lashes with its tail.

When you're starting out as an actor, you keep raising the stakes. First, you just want to be a character who comes on stage and gets a laugh or two and exits. Just five minutes on a stage, not even Broadway. But every time you say your little prayer at night, you place more demands.

I am becoming increasingly difficult to please as a reader, but I adore being surprised by a really wonderful book, written by someone I've never heard of before.

Germany is an economic giant but a political midget, and with the end of the Cold War she has started to muscle her presence throughout Europe and the world.

A director is a choreographer, both politically and creatively.

When you're on your fifth album, you are going to be judged against all your previous work and expectations.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

Mathematicians are always playing tricks on each other. They're always pulling jokes on each other.

I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.

One of my problems with a lot of things I watch is that everybody's too pretty, and it takes me out of the film because I'm thinking that all these people look like I've seen them in a cafe in Los Angeles.

I think it's the business part of the word show business that causes me the most concern.

Your job as a writer is to find storylines, narrative structures, and characters to show the things that you believe rather than saying them or telling them.

Creatively, it's great, because when you write your own movies, you get to create whatever you want.

Emotional intelligence grows through perception. Look around at your present situation and observe it through the level of feeling.

As six-time world karate champion and then a movie star, I put too much trust in who I was, what I could do, and what I acquired. I forgot how much I needed others and especially God.

One thing that I think never goes out of style is just purity. Niceness and purity. And the Muppets have never lost that. Kermit especially is just wide-eyed wonder, unblinking. And he can't blink. Which I think probably helps.