I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

I could hardly sit through ‚Frozen.‘ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

When a family film is done well, there’s a character that every member of the audience can relate to. I want to be one of those guys.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

I think I have always had a little humor.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

I really have had to swallow my own prejudice at times.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

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.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

As a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

No man is hurt but by himself.

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.