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.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

I never played with anything like toys.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

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

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

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.‘

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.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

All art is quite useless.

I’m not a sandwich store that only sells turkey sandwiches. I sell a lot of different things.

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.