It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.

Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.

For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Facts are stubborn things.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

I need physics more than friends.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

Children need to get a high-quality education, avoid violence and the criminal-justice system, and gain jobs. But they deserve more. We want them to learn not only reading and math but fairness, caring, self-respect, family commitment, and civic duty.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

I made all my generals out of mud.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

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.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Harvard makes mistakes too, you know. Kissinger taught there.

Young men and women, your education is ever important – to us, to you, and to God.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.

When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Information is not knowledge.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary, in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.