A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

The mainstream is always under attack.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

‚I am‘ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‚I do‘ is the longest sentence?

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

History, a distillation of rumour.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

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.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

What ‚multiculturalism‘ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

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

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.

This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

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.

I feel strange when I get applauded by people in power… because it’s obvious that it’s them I’m criticizing, but they can’t show that in front of the cameras. It’s quite funny sometimes.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

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

I am not a televangelist.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

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

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.

I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

Study men, not historians.