I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.

The song ‚Innocent‘ is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.

I’m interested in Jackson Pollock’s kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it’s nothing, and yet it’s incredible.

Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

I am just happy to be part of the Nike family.

Jealousy is just love and hate at the same time.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

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.

We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.