But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

I always wanted a family.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

People see me on the street, and they point to me, and they’re like, ‚Hey! All right, all right, all right!‘

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.

I’m a writer first and a singer second.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

I hope when I’m dead I’ll be considered an icon, though.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Life is anything but predictable.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I’m a writer.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life’s possibilities.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.