All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

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

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

Life is our dictionary.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

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.

I’m a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

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.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

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

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

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

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

The blurring of fantasy and reality is something that the Japanese herald in their life, in their day-to-day commercialism.

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.

I always wished for this, but it’s almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn’t love them.

Rastafari not a culture, it’s a reality.