Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?

Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.

What you get free costs too much.

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.

Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way.

I like reality. It tastes like bread.

The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it.

Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.

God is on everyone's side... and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.

Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.

Oh, love is real enough; you will find it someday, but it has one archenemy - and that is life.

Our entire life - consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.

Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be truly base.

Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.

When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past... And when you are seventy, nearly all of you.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.

Men create real miracles when they use their God-given courage and intelligence.

All evil comes from the old.They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.

Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.

We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down.

Things are beautiful if you love them.

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.

Every man thinks god is on his side.

With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil.

A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.

What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating.

An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.

Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.

Our entire life... consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.

There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will prevent me from being happy.

Propaganda is a soft weapon hold it in your hands too long and it will move about like a snake and strike the other way.

Until the day of his death no man can be sure of his courage.

Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.

The only immorality is not to do when one hast to do it.

It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

The military has been tremendously important in the past during catastrophes and in protecting the population. But it shouldn't become an auxiliary police force.

Human beings will line up for miles to buy a bucket of catastrophes, but don't try selling sunshine and light - you'll go broke.

Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.

AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.

Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen.

The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.