Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Of course, we're all a mass of contradictions.

I do believe as human beings we are a great mass of contradictions.

It is very true to say that work done by writers is quite often an attempt to give solid expression to that which is bothering them... They feel they have got it right if they express the stress.

I don't think any human being/artist is 100% emotionally stable, based on the human condition and our emotions that relate to it.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

Man is a mind betrayed, not served, by his organs.

I proved to my own satisfaction that I am madder than I think.

Song-writing is therapy for me. I'm a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There's a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster.

I'm definitely interested in exploring human contradictions. Contradictions are what make us human - it's what defines us as human beings. Contradictions are what make characters interesting, and I've been lucky to be presented with characters who have a lot of contradictions.

Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.

I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.

Man has always been half-monster, half-dreamer.

Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.

If you're a human being walking the earth, you're weird, you're strange, you're psychologically challenged.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode.

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

It is difficult to write about any form of mental disease, especially your own, without sounding as if you were examining a bug under glass.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about.

Almost every month, I have a day where I get stuck in the mud of me. I used to blame hormones and PMS. After I hit 50, I blamed the lack of hormones. But men get stuck, too, so it must simply be the human condition.

Mind and body obstruct one another's pleasures.

The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up in the crucible of their days and certainly not always - if ever - capable of articulating their condition.

I'm full of contradictions.