Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn’t matter if you have a beautiful face or not.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

If you wish to be a writer, write.

There are a lot of groups that feel a little bit strange around me, because I am inclusive.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.

The artist in me cries out for design.

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I like being a writer.

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me.

I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong. I mean you can’t remember everything all the time, and especially if you’re having hard times personally, things going on that you – you know, and then people make it worse. And that makes you feel worse.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

I don’t carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

I’m kind of claustrophobic… It’s not even like enclosed spaces. It’s like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can’t get out.

You fail only if you stop writing.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.