Claire Denis Quotes

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

We need to have an understanding of what causes what to happen in the world, and why.

Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.

Everything has a cause.

To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.

When you are thinking something, you have the feeling that the thoughts do nothing except inform you the way things are and then you choose to do something and you do it. That's what people generally assume. But actually, the way you think determines the way you're going to do things. Then you don't notice a result comes back, or you don't see it as a result of what you've done, or even less do you see it as a result of how you were thinking. Is that clear?

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go.

every act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

There is nothing without reason.

There are no random acts.

We're not the cause, we're the effect.

As the cause is, so the effect will be Cause is never different from effect, the effect is but the cause reproduced in another form.

Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.

[Science is] the desire to know causes.

Every why hath a wherefore.

I know that there is a reason for everything. Perhaps at the moment that an event occurs we have neither the insight or the foresight to comprehend the reason, but with time and patience it will come to light.

Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward.

Nothing comes from nothing.

Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

Narrative stories are nothing but models of karma and causality - how one thing leads to another. And a lot of narrative fiction is about causality that we don't immediately understand.

Profit is not a cause but a result-

You cannot expect to get the effect when you neglect to create the cause.

We all have our little illusions about our own mental abilities.