“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both.”

“A thriller is incomparably more arresting when it involves plausible people doing plausible things, rather than archetypes co-starring with animation.”

“The secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life, and in elevating them to art.”

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

“It is not the strongest of the species which survives, not the most intelligent, it is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

“An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.”

“It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

“For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.”

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.”

“Now when I bore people at parties, they think it’s their fault.”

“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

“Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.”

“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”

“The life and love we create is the life and love we live.”

“I think there are two keys to being creatively productive. One is not being daunted by one’s fear of failure, the second is sheer perseverance.”

“Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it very well.”

“It’s easy for any of us to fall victim to our biases if our thoughts are rarely questioned by people who look, think and experience life different from us.”