The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.
Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
The more stories I told, the more I found I wanted to tell. There was always something left unsaid. I got hooked by my own impulse of 'Well, what's gonna happen next?'
Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.
The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity" and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.
Consider what you think justice requires, and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgment will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong.
When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.
I've never gone through an audition process or anything. In most of my decisions like that, I just kind of feel it out: You know, do I feel comfortable with this person?
Maybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they are to birds flying overhead. Our first impulse is to ignore them.
One must act in painting as in life, directly.
Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.
Timing is irrelevant when it comes to desire.
I never think about the play or visualize anything. I do what comes to me at that moment. Instinct. It has always been that way.
I'll eat one cookie, not a whole box of cookies. But I'll still eat the one cookie... sometimes two, or even three. But not the whole box.
I've never seen anything that I didn't want to jump off of.
The Founding Fathers worried that 'some common impulse of passion' might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It's a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly.
I know what I want to do even before I know why I want to do it.
I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't realize then that it's the same impulse. It's make-believe. It's performance.
Nothing is more fallacious than to expect to produce any valuable or permanent results in political projects by relying merely on the reason of men. Men are ... for the most part governed by the impulses of passion.
The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
