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

It's possible to disagree with someone about the ethics of non-violence without wanting to kick his face in.

You see, 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.

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

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

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with.