LUIS BUNUEL

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.

In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.

Thank God I'm an atheist.

A paranoiac like a poet, is born, not made.

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I'd love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.

If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese.

I am an atheist still, thank God.

Fortunately somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

I would give my life for a man who is looking for the truth. But I would gladly kill a man who thinks that he has found the truth.

I find it [science] analytical, pretentious and superficial-largely because it does not address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox-in other words,-all the things I love the most.

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Like the majority of deaf people, I don't like blind people much.

I am an atheist, thanks be to God.

If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and foul.

If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.

Mystery is the essential element of every work of art.

I can't help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.

The bar... is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable-and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a client that doesn't like to talk.

Mystery is the basic element of all works of art.

Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar.