Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

When I got depressed, I watched Bruce Lee movies. I learned everything from Bruce Lee.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

I had to get rich so I could sing like I was poor again.

The love of heaven makes one heavenly.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

The best part about being in your thirties is you know what works for you.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Energy begets energy.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

We are wiser than we know.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.