The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.

Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it. You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn't work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event.