“But how foolish it is to set out one’s life, when one is not even owner of the morrow!”

“Foolish: It's all foolish. Life is a farce— a stupid, sickening farce played out by fools.”

“The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.”

“Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life,
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!”

“To devote oneself to vigilance when the enemy is an imaginary one is idle, and to congratulate oneself for looking long and well for a foe that is not coming is foolish and sinful. My life has been a waste.”

“One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it.”

“For with slight efforts how should we obtain great results? It is foolish even to desire it.”

“Even now, I cannot decide whether I was foolish dupe or noble and tragic lover. Or whether the two are one and the same.”

“I think an interpreter has to sing everything, to sing what wants to sing. It cannot be with that foolishness, that here in Brazil we face this thing that when one records a song, later no one can rerecord it. This is madness, absurd. Music doesn't have an owner, the music doesn´t belong to anyone.
- Comment on the excessive protectionism of composers in Brazil. Domingão do Faustão Program, Rede Globo, 2003”

“Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.”