I like to push characters to extremes so they have to make really tough decisions and there is no life more extreme than that of an athlete.

We live in a time of extremes. People think that, on a scale of 1-10, if they're not at a 10 for happy, they're not happy.

Everyone thinks these are self-portraits but they aren't meant to be. I just use myself as a model because I know I can push myself to extremes, make each shot as ugly or goofy or silly as possible.

The political system loves the extremes, it doesn't so much show a lot love for the moderates.

In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes.

Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.

I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes.

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.

I have an affinity towards extremes.

People don't like what's happened to the big parties. They think they've been dragged off to the extremes. They think the quality of leadership is below what a country like the United Kingdom ought to have available. And they want something different.

From China and India to Turkey and Brazil, when women have gotten access to education, to family planning and to a vital place in the economy, greater prosperity has followed. And when women are free to speak and learn, they temper the extremes of ideology and fanaticism and raise sons who are less likely to become human bombs.

We never know who we are going to be until we are tested, but perhaps we can test ourselves without going to the extremes of war. Perhaps we can be kinder now, live with less now, reach out to others now - and build an inner reserve of a strong identity that will hold us up even when everything else falls away.

I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous and reformed in life can derive the greatest and most salutary truths and impressions.

Conversations with sisters can spark extremes of anger or extremes of love. Everything said between sisters carries meaning not only from what was just said but from all the conversations that came before - and 'before' can span a lifetime. The layers of meaning combine profound connection with equally profound competition.

I really swung between the extremes. From the danger of being ostracised by the society, I almost overnight found myself as virtually the darling of the millions.

In order for President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden to be moderates, they just have to present themselves between the extremes of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's isolationism and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's hawkishness - the difference between living in a cave or conducting ourselves so that we're in need of one.

I fell in love at 14 and I remember that mad, tense feeling and all the mad things you do for the person - all those extremes and all the stuff you don't mind putting up with.

There's two extremes in male sport: there's complete and total worship of them, or complete and utter contempt. Those extremes create huge problems at either end. And it creates distance, too, and leads them into a bubble.

I will do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes.

To think that our political organisation is immutable is the best way to hand the country over to the extremes.

What I saw when I was doing research is that in pursuit of a middle ground, people will kind of split the difference between the two extremes that they're hearing. And I think what's problematic is that people are seeing vaccinating on schedule, on time, as an extreme position.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

We tend to think of extremes of emotions as registering, for example, you have to cry or laugh or get angry. But for the most part, we find it difficult to read each other most of the time. If you walk through the street, most people are pretty difficult to read. But they're thinking inside.

I have such an extreme attitude about work, where I can just completely be derelict of my responsibilities and then when I am not derelict, I am completely indulged in it. I swing pretty wildly from the two extremes.

Extremes, though contrary, have the like effects. Extreme heat kills, and so extreme cold: extreme love breeds satiety, and so extreme hatred; and too violent rigor tempts chastity, as does too much license.

The idea of victimage is a dreadful thing, a product of a safe middle-class perspective. What people who are not safe develop is a tragic wisdom, a wisdom that embraces contradiction and seeks a sense of balance rather than going to extremes.

I'm with Milton and the Rolling Stones: I don't find the Devil an unsympathetic character. But in any case, my fiction is populated as much by people who do good as it is by those who do bad. I'm interested in imaginatively accommodating as much of the human as possible, for which you need both moral extremes and everything in between.

I like going crazy. And not just for art - I like extremes in general.

You can't just lecture the poor that they shouldn't riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available.

We shall never be understood or respected by the English until we carry our individuality to extremes, and by asserting our independence, become of sufficient consequence in their eyes to merit a closer study than they have hitherto accorded us.