The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

Hope is a waking dream.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

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

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

My drive is other people’s success.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,‘ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‚Shake it off. Stop complainin‘. Stop grumblin‘. Stop cryin‘. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

I’ve had a fan who made a painting of my face with her fingers. I have put it up in my room. It was sweet and very different.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

No great thing is created suddenly.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction – especially autobiographies and biographies. I’ve read ‚Long Walk to Freedom‘ by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I’m totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

I cannot live without books.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.