The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

A yawn is a silent shout.

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.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.

Order is heaven’s first law.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

The artist in me cries out for design.

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

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.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things – and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Thought is powerful in all phases. Even in my career, even in my life, things end up exactly how I visualized them.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

When I say something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

My favorite affirmation when I feel stuck or out of sorts is: Whatever I need is already here, and it is all for my highest good. Jot this down and post it conspicuously throughout your home, on the dashboard of your car, at your office, on your microwave oven, and even in front of your toilets!

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

At the heart of every being lies creation’s dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.

Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

Silence is safer than speech.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Few people realize that luck is created.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

We are moving towards a world that is reordering itself and that may appear more ordered at some periods of time, but I see no sign that we are moving towards a world order in my definition of it – namely, a system which is accepted, which is internalized by the majority of the key participants.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

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

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

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.