All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

To the women and children, T stands for tender. To the bad guys and thugs, it stands for tough.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

Frank Lloyd Wright… his things were beautiful but not very functional.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

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

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

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

You cannot step into the same river twice.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

I think, in many people’s minds, the Confederate battle flag is not only a memorial to our ancestors, which is perfectly OK, but also a symbol of white superiority and an inclination for people to believe that even slavery would’ve been OK.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

No one but a fool is always right.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

The less you know, the more you believe.