People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

Sleeping people are so remote.... Right here, but out of communication. That's what strikes humans as uncanny about sleep. Its utter privacy. The sleeper turns his back on everyone.

You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.

When people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always WAS a writer.

Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.

All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.

How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn't saved, isn't taught?

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story.

Now perhaps an excessive dread of overpopulation--overcrowding--reflects not an outward reality, but an inward state of mind. If you feel overcrowded when you're not, what does that mean? Maybe that you're afraid of human contact--of being close to people, of being touched.

George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.

No society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.

It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self--ceases. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the reality--the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness--that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.

What is life without incompatible realities?

Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.

At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.

What is a body that casts no shadow? Nothing, a formlessness, two-dimensional, a comic-strip character. If I deny my own profound relationship with evil I deny my own reality. I cannot do, or make; I can only undo, unmake.

Now perhaps an excessive dread of overpopulation--overcrowding--reflects not an outward reality, but an inward state of mind. If you feel overcrowded when you're not, what does that mean? Maybe that you're afraid of human contact--of being close to people, of being touched.

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair...Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.

The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever.

No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world.

People who exploit their power and abuse others need to be revealed.

You need to learn to say no and need to recognise when you're being exploited.

Whether something is sensible or not is subjective. What is sensible to me might not be for others.

In a field like acting, there is pressure of all kinds, and it becomes tricky to navigate this space. There isn't a particular path laid out to get what you want; you have to figure out ways to get there on your own. And yet, there is no guarantee of getting what you want. At times, you don't know whom to listen to or whose advice to follow.

I want our generation to break stereotypes, and I want Indians who are making their foray in Hollywood to get all kinds of roles.

It is very important to transform every disadvantage into an advantage.

I think you can't get anywhere without hard work.

Certain people get an opportunity because they happen to be in the right place at the right time. It has no bearing on their talent. I don't think we should look at it and feel bitter about it. That's the way the cookie crumbles in all professions.

I will do a big-budget film. I will do an indie film. I will do a short film. I will do a digital platform show, television, and even theatre. I don't have any restrictions in terms of platform as long as the content is something that I find interesting.

Sometimes you really make bad mistakes, and you want to go back and just erase them.

Why are we only talking about gender discrimination. We need to focus on the other kinds of discriminations in practice.

I don't know why, but I can't get myself to like animal prints.

I'm an actor, and my main purpose is to bring out interesting stories to life. If it involves a cause that I can be a part of, I most definitely will.

I run after good stories. If I did not like the story of 'Padman,' and if it was imparting the same message, I probably would not have done it.

I want to challenge myself with each project.

While I am open to good offers when they come by, I have found my calling in theatre.

I love to travel and go to dance classes whenever I get time.

Every night, I watch films.

A brand should live up to the expectations of people; it should deliver what it promises.