A smile is the universal welcome.

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.

We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.

It was a long time in the making my divorce. One day became less special than the next and pretty soon we ceased all conversation. It is a sad day when you have nothing left to say.

The sad thing is that I feel so boring because 'Twilight' is literally how every conversation I have these days begins - whether it's someone I'm meeting for the first time or someone I just haven't seen in a while. The first thing I want to say to them is 'It's insane! And as a person I can't do anything!'

Well there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.

You're an actor are you? Well all that means is: you are irresponsible irrational romantic and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal material sensational - and probably sexual!

That's what I like about film-it can be bizarre classic normal romantic. Cinema is to me the most versatile thing.

The telephone which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations has a romance of its own.

I have found that the players who have played in that game really do have respect for their adversaries.

Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort the educational value of a good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people with respect to our political interests than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.

I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth.

And these two elements are at odds with one another because Freud is utterly adversary to almost all the ways of structuring the human experience found in Western religions. No Western religion can countenance Freud's view of man.

Human rights is a universal standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.

Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish and one which because of its very catholicity grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.

The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour raw and confrontational.

A conversation goes sometimes into personal things and that's nicer. You look to each other and you have a different picture you get into a relationship.

Since the beginning of the 21st century thanks to the concerted efforts of both sides China-U.S. relationship has on the whole enjoyed steady growth. Since President Obama took office we have maintained close contact through exchange of visits meetings telephone conversations and letters.

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen to talk to have a conversation - or a relationship.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

If you're doing an interview you need conversational tension. After you talk to them you're not going to have a relationship with them they're not going to like you they're not going to be your friend.