Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I’m so happy because today I found my friends – they’re in my head.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

No pressure, no diamonds.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

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.

A word after a word after a word is power.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.

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

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Marriage is the most wonderful thing ever.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

I like sitting and writing with my buddies.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.