“Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.”

“To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.”

“Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.”

“I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed.” 

If I was to see any of my films now I would feel, oh god you know it's awful I could do that so much better now. Look at all the terrible things I did and all the mistakes and all the compromises and all the blunders I made, and it would be such a terrible experience for me to see them. So it's better that I put it out and move on to the next thing and make it history as quickly as possible.

I can understand that an audience, buying a ticket to see a picture of mine, wants to see something funny because they feel confident that at least I have a fighting chance to make a funny film when I make a film, whereas if I make a dramatic film there's one chance in a thousand that it's really going to come out great, so I understand how they feel about that and they're completely right.

If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job.

I'd always wanted to be a dramatic. Comedy comes more naturally to me. I can do it with more facility. So I feel more comfortable with it.

This gulf war syndrome thing is truly unfortunate, and I've met some of the vets who have this. These are my guys, and I feel terrible about it.

I can stand in a crystal stream without another human around me and cast all day long, and if I never catch a single fish, I can come home and still feel like I had a wonderful time. It's the being there that's important.

Fish are a renewable resource, and one of the problems we've had is people feel obliged to catch the limit, then throw 'em in the garbage can.

All you have to do is hold your first soldier who is dying in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that I can't do anything about it... Then you understand the horror of war.

It's nice to feel that you have a purpose.

“Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.” 

“What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers. Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe.” 

“Now that being on the road was my choice, not my fate, I lost the melancholy feeling of 'everybody has a home but me'. I could leave—because I could return. I could return—because I knew adventure lay just beyond an open door. Instead of 'either/or', I discovered a whole world of 'and'.” 

“If time is relative, doing new things actually makes us feel we’ve lived a longer life.” 

“A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.” 

“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.” 

The music industry is not set up well at all, environmentally. But I sing about what I feel, and I'm very inspired by activists and friends that I get to connect with.

When people connect to my work, it makes me feel great. A lot of that stuff is really deep, and when I play something and people feel what I feel, and use it in important situations in their lives, like at weddings or funerals, that's so powerful. It means I can connect with them on an important level.

I feel my live shows are my music; everything blossoms from the live shows.

I just want to do work that gets people excited and makes them feel things, no matter their economic or racial background.

“A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.”