Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

In an interconnected age when opportunistic adversaries can work in tandem to destroy stability and prosperity, our country needs to regain its strategic footing. We need to bring the clarity to our efforts before we lose the confidence of the American people and the support of potential allies.

No nation should stoke instability in its neighbor’s country.

I’m tender on the inside.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

I like entertaining people. I really miss it.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.

I have an immense amount of respect for acting. I’ve always loved movies and was always fascinated by movie-making. But to become an actor, I wanted to commit myself.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn’t believe in.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

I could hardly sit through ‚Frozen.‘ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

Fighting football, not serenity football – that is what I like.

We’re the only animal that wakes up and doesn’t stretch.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

The only passion that guides me is for the truth… I look at everything from this point of view.

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

I like being a writer.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

There’s not much time to unwind, but you know what, it’s because I love what I do. I look forward to the season. I look forward to playing games. It doesn’t ever feel like work.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

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

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

I wanted to write.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

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

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

‚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.‘

WWE is a space where I thrived, and I loved, and I still do. I love connecting with an audience; that is the greatest thing about going back to WWE.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

It’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

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

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

Just on a practical side, if you wake up early in the morning – like at 4:30 in the morning – you’re going to have some free time to yourself to make things happen, to take care of things that are important to you.

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

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.