Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption, but how near or distant that is, nobody knows- not even God.

Life is one big minefield, and the only place that isn't a minefield is the place they make the mines.

Public life is constantly aware of the volcano.

The world is such a blooming topsy-turvy, fragile, bleak place.

You want there to be some magical answer that will just make everything clear and easy to understand, and that's just not the way love works.

I think it's a mistake to try and overthink how you are going to be received, because that assumes that you are going to be received in the first place.

It's hard to say what I meant by "as we know it." I'm not about to go up on a mountain on new year's eve and wait for the lightening to strike.

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.

It’s like someone who prays every night saying God’s a good listener. Just because you’re talking to us doesn’t mean we’re listening. With me and God, you never really know.

War is...a trinity of violence, chance, and reason.

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

Not knowing what's happening, from script to script, as an actor and as a character, lends itself to the same tension and anxiety of not knowing what's happening.

Men and Melons are hard to know.

I feel like a lot of the films I do, part of the reason I like doing them is I'm not 100 percent sure what it's going to be. It's exciting. I read an equal amount of very generic scripts, and you kind of know exactly what those are and that doesn't whet my appetite. I already know what it is or I already know what the character is. It's just a lot harder to get interested.

No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

Woody [Allen] is a fascinating character to be around. You don't really know what he's going to want. You're on your toes, but you're on your heels too, if you know what I mean.

Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.

Life is a sleazy stranger, who looks vaguely familiar; flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar.

When you see natural disasters caught on film you realize how well they had been imagined by Hollywood for such a long time. It's all good fun. You never know who's gonna survive and who doesn't.

The world began in hazard and will end in it.

Dealing with the unknown, the unexpected, is a reflection for me musically of what's happening in the world, because people are learning how to dialog with each other without any past strategy or any kind of formula from the past.

Life is like a box of Hand grenades,You never know what will blow you to kingdom come

"Would you, do you, my dear?" rejoined the Captain ... "I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see. She's full one minute, and round upon you next."

But the smoking is very frustrating. Who knows where it will go; where the story will go; where the character will go? There's still lots of options.