Man becomes his most creative during war.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn’t refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

Bhai was my hero and he had immense influence on me.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

You need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‚I’m possible‘!

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

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

Since I was old enough to understand what a songwriter/producer is, I’ve had a curiosity about how Max Martin creates what he creates. I wanted to see that happen. I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn from him.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

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

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

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.

We must use time creatively.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated, I would be a damn fool.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.