One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one's life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury.
Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
Life at any time can become difficult: life at any time can become easy. It all depends upon how one adjusts oneself to life.
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?
The presence of a big obstacle doesn't define a negative life, but failing to face and conquer it, is what builds a wall between oneself and a positive life.
A life of failure could only be possible if one betrays oneself by giving up on one's true destiny to settle for failure.
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
To my mind, one does not put oneself in place of the past; one only adds a new link.
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn't worth the trouble put in.
Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.
The greatest discovery is to find a hero within oneself that will choose life over death; and fight for hope through despair to possess the will to live.
Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.
Writing is a lonely business, which if allowed publicity and socializing it might deteriorate. Supportive people understand the need of a writer to withdraw to the solitude of oneself.
Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one's service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them.
Florida isn't so much a place where one goes to reinvent oneself, as it is a place where one goes if one no longer wished to be found.
One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it.
Guilt is a manifestation of condemnation or aversion towards oneself, which does not understand the changing transformative quality of mind. 'Seeking the Heart of Wisdom