Leo Tolstoy Quotes

The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

I like banks because they keep my money safe, but I don't want to talk about banks 12 times a year.

Boy's natural play is rough and tumble play, it's the universal play of little boys. And it's very different from aggression. And we are a society that's failing to understand the distinction.

When considering a career move, consider the most important assumptions that have to prove true and how you can swiftly and inexpensively test if they are valid. Also, remain realistic about the path ahead of you.

I've never tried to measure myself on any scale. A person is more multifaceted than the label they often get stuck with. On the other hand someone's whole behaviour allows you to characterise them in a certain way. This person has liberal convictions, that person has conservative ones, this person is a radical socialist, and so on.

Reading a poem aloud to an audience is gestural as much as precise.

Dad, I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.

I believe that for lots of churches and religious institutions, their main focus on the development of faith among parishioners needs to spread to the community.

Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.

If I see something that's morally ambiguous or ambiguously beautiful or has some pull in some way, I won't censor myself; I always run towards the light.

Marine protected areas, and particularly no-take zones, are very effective in allowing regeneration of fish stocks.

I feel when you walk into somebody's apartment on Fifth Avenue or house in Malibu and you see a Basquiat, a Warhol, a Richard Prince, you say to yourself, '$700,000, $2.2 million, $350,000...' To me that is completely uninteresting. I'd rather go to a house where there's great art and I have no idea who the work is by.

You can't trust a promise someone makes while they're drunk, in love, hungry, or running for office.

My biggest hero, Gregory Peck, was my birthday present on April 14, 1973. I just sat and stared at him.

I have a wife, I have sons: all of them hostages given to fate.

I've always felt so grateful that I dropped out of school, that I never had to do a thesis. I wouldn't know how to organise and structure myself to film so that B follows A and C follows B.

The Parthenon without the marbles is like a smile with a tooth missing.

Restricting access to such a basic health care service, which 99% of sexually experienced American women have used and 62% of American women are using right now, is out of touch with public sentiment.

I spent years shaking the damage that comes with being burned by living near someone else's spotlight.

I wouldn't throw all spitballs. I'd go maybe two or three innings without throwing a spitter, but I always had them looking for it.