Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.