Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Fame may go by and – so long, I’ve had you.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

At the end of the day, your fans are the people who support you in and out. And their opinions matter.

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

It’s a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don’t sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

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.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

Fame is fickle, and I know it. It has its compensations but it also has its drawbacks, and I’ve experienced them both.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

In the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate… The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.