It is a luxury to be understood.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

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

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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?

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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

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.

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

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.