In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Language is the dress of thought.

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

What we live by we die by.

What I enjoy most is doing something I’ve never done before.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

I’m not a natural joiner.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

I remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.

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

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

It would be great to be 105 and still making films.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

Our life is made by the death of others.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

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.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

I feel that I’ve done what I wanted to do, and that makes me feel fairly content.

A letter does not blush.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Things won’t get better dwelling on the past. Accept what has happened. Then move forward.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne – to beat her down, hide her.

The most challenging project I’ve ever done, I think, is every single thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s never easy.