Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Reality in movies is the reality of the story you're telling, so it may not match the reality as we know it, but the reason there's art is that it tries to bring some kind of understanding of all the suffering and joys and pain that we go through. Storytelling brings some value to it.

One of my problems with a lot of things I watch is that everybody's too pretty, and it takes me out of the film because I'm thinking that all these people look like I've seen them in a cafe in Los Angeles.

My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.

We have drained common sense out of our politics. The more we focus on tactics and games, the more good people check out and give up.

I have played so many romantic roles that I don't know if I am really a romantic in real life. I get confused about the real me.

I live for what I haven't done.

When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be even lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.

I definitely have a soft spot for women. I was raised by women - my mom and two older sisters. I've been surrounded by estrogen since I was born.

We started the company out of frustration with the employer that we had because we were building great stuff and there was no way that this stuff was ever going to get into the hands of the people who could use it.

If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.

I'm not God, don't intend to be and hope I never have that much power.

The national will is the supreme law of the Republic, and on all subjects within the limits of his constitutional powers should be faithfully obeyed by the public servant.

It is the creative potential itself in human beings that is the image of God.

Basically, we've grown up very focused on the institution. The institution tells me what to do. It tells me where to go. It tells me what my career path is, and then I, sort of, attach my own personal desires, my own personal interests. I think we're living in a time where we're going to have to change - to put people in the center.

One posthumous measure of a person's life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never lived to encounter. You picture his reactions, his advice, his sage commentary and humorous asides. For instance, I think about Mark Twain's hypothetical take on current events several times a week.

Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else.

You got to be willing to walk in a storm. That's what I tell people all the time.

What I like about Oxford is how small it is; it's really more of a big town than a city.

America is truly special because it's founded on an idea. It's the ideological and philosophical equivalent of a formless God, in other words, you know? It's, again, the only great country in the world that it is formed out of words.

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.