Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

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

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn’t happen, but other planets.

I got a signed document from Bullock’s saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignment. Of course, nobody bought any of them, but otherwise, I was a big success: I had my drawings on sale at Bullock’s!

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

Life is a dead-end street.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

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

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

My imagination is a twisted place.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

In art the best is good enough.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

The art is long, life is short.

When you’re around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don’t have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.