College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

My mother came from India to go to the University of California, Berkeley.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

You can think of the entire Internet as a place where ideas embodied in cyberspace are having a war, and it’s not much different than the war of gods in heaven, which has been taking place since there’s been human beings.

Young men and women, your education is ever important – to us, to you, and to God.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

See, that’s why Barack’s running: to end the war in Iraq responsibly – to build an economy that lifts every family, to make sure health care is available for every American – and to make sure that every child in this nation has a world-class education all the way from preschool to college.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

The history of science is rich in example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

All good art is an indiscretion.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

You fail only if you stop writing.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that’s associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

I wanted to write.

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.