The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Heaven is a state of mind, not a location, since Spirit is everywhere and in everything.

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.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

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

Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States – and war is what they got.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

War is a contagion.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

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

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern… No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money… they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

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

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

Violence has been Nicaragua’s most important export to the world.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.