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

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

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?

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.