As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested...in unskilled labor. ...The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.

Alice Walker

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, 19

I just get things done instead of talking about getting them done. I don't go out and party. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs and I'm not married, that leaves a lot of time for my work.

Henry Rollins

I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I am satisfied with it.

Grandma Moses

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent

Victor Hugo

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

John Burroughs

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Making movies is not rocket science. It's about relationships and communication and strangers coming together to see if they can get along harmoniously, productively, and creatively. That's a challenge. When it works, it's fantastic and will lift you up. When it doesn't work, it's almost just as fascinating.

Julia Roberts

...and yet, though desirous to be gone, she could not quit the mansion-house, or look an adieu to the cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda, or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of the village, without a saddened heart. Scenes had passed in Uppercross which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. She left it all behind her, all but the recollection that such things had been.

Jane Austen

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples my philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Lama

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

Ray Charles