Trust, but verify.

Success is not something I've wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that's true, big-time success. If not, it's much ado about nothing. [On the prospects for his 1997 movies The Rainmaker and Good Will Hunting].

Either you think -- or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. - The Books in My Life.

I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm.

What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning -- and some of them many times over -- what do you find? That you can swim? Well -- life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!