Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

I’d been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it’s environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this ‚ambient music.‘ But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.

History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

History is written by the victors.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

‚Kiss Land‘ is the story after ‚Trilogy‘; it’s pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it’s very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, ‚Why Japan?‘ I simply tell them it’s the furthest I’ve ever been from home. It really is a different planet.

Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

I have to be seen to be believed.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they’re so visible. They’re out in the open. When they’re visible, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

Paris by night is a nightmare now. It is not a cliche anymore.

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

Every story has its demands.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

A properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it’s actually a being. ‚Harry Potter“s a good example. So Harry’s the hero, right. But he’s tainted with evil. There’s a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It’s well balanced.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.