The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.

Imagination rules the world.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

Nothing can come of nothing.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.

Unless and until you inspire the people, you will not get results. Imposition will never give you the results. Inspiration will always give you the results.

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.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

I’m not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don’t have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don’t adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.

The sun is gone, but I have a light.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

The concept of commercialism in the fashion and art world is looked down upon. You know, just to think, ‚What amount of creativity does it take to make something that masses of people like?‘ And, ‚How does creativity apply across the board?‘

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

I create stars.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

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

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

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

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

To ‚choose‘ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?