Joseph Conrad Quotes

I am a deeply superficial person.

I'm a cynical idealist.

Any woman can be a siren one minute and in pigtails the next. I am a very complex person with more than just the one facet that television played on.

Partly, I like a bad reputation. But I also want a reputation of being a good person.

All I really care about is that I'm being honest and I'm real and I'm coming from a real place. There's a part of me that's a total cad and a part of me that's also a family man.

The world asks us to be quickly readable, but the thing about human beings is that we are more than one thing. We are multiple selves. We are massively contradictory.

I think a bit of mystery is good, and I used to feel like an eccentric person pretending to be normal. But I am actually just a normal person seeming eccentric, by what I'm putting myself through.

Best advice: 'Just be yourself.' Worst advice: 'Just be yourself.'

In any case, I would never make a film that was only one thing. Even if it's my warmest, most romantic film, I still want it to have the more cynical view of things, showing the irony and absurdity of things that we consider normal.

No, as much of an insider as I become, I will still always be an outsider. It's just the essence of me being who I am and doing what I do.

Things which are equally bad are also equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things. - Humbug

We are not always even what we are most.

I think the fact that I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, has its own kind of magic in it.

I want to appear ordinary, but I have it understood that I am not.

Trying too hard to be too good, even when trying to be bad, is too good for the bad, too bad for the good.

Life may more than once call upon you to prove Who You Are by demonstrating an aspect of Who You Are Not.

Because you aren't who you think you are. You aren't what everyone else believes. You might have delivered countless deaths but you love more fiercely than anyone I've ever known.

I'm not optimistic at all, nor am I pessimistic.

I may be a real bad boy, but baby I'm a real good man.

Never try to wear a hat that has more character than you do.

I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys' treehouse. My whole life's been like that.

I asked the Zebra, are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are you sad with some happy days? Are you neat with some sloppy ways? Or are you sloppy with some neat ways? And on and on and on and on and on and on he went. I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.

Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn't appreciate and value you." You said the other day life was long," I shot back. "Which is it?" It's both," she said, shrugging. "It all depends on how you choose to live it. It's like forever, always changing." Nothing can be two opposite things at once," I said. "It's impossible." No," she replied, squeezing my hand, "what's impossible is that we actually think it could be anything OTHER than that.

On one hand, I'm an optimistic pessimist. On the other, I'm a pessimistic optimist. But while there's life, there's still hope, and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't think there was still hope.

I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time. I don't think it's one motion unfortunately - I wish we could say it's better, better, better - but I think it's better, bad, better, bad - you know?