Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

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

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

I got a signed document from Bullock’s saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignment. Of course, nobody bought any of them, but otherwise, I was a big success: I had my drawings on sale at Bullock’s!

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.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

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

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

The Green Revolution focused on the big three – maize, rice and wheat – and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.

I believe in being an innovator.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

All art is quite useless.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

I can express myself.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.