Quotes on Ifs

If people thought a quarter of what they speak, this world would be heaven.

Do not sit down and try to pump up repentance from the dry well of a corrupt nature. It is contrary to the laws of your mind to suppose that you can force your soul into that gracious state. Take your heart in prayer to Him who understands it and say, "Lord, cleanse it. Lord, renew it. Lord, work repentance in it." The more you try to produce penitent emotions in yourself, the more you will be disappointed. However, if you believingly think of Jesus dying for you, repentance will burst forth.

Do you really believe in what you said or wrote – in the thing that’s bringing criticism? And if I do believe it, I can withstand anything.

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.

If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment.

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.

The thing about the truth is that it exists outside of belief. Even if nobody believes it, that thing is still true.

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.

Of course, I love you,' the flower said to him. 'If you were not aware of it, it was my fault.

Everyone always tells you that you're the only one that can do this or that role right, and if you say no, they go to somebody else and tell them that they're the only one that can do it right. But when they're talking to you, you're always the 'Best Actor of Your Generation.'

Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.

But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.

I go into any movie that's historical fiction thinking, 'OK, I'm here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it's a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won't even be bothered by the opinions. I'll make my own mind up.'

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.

You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.

It's much easier to get over someone if you can delude yourself into thinking you never really cared that much.