To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

I do think that we’re gonna move towards this world where eventually you’ll be able to capture a whole experience that you’re in and be able to send that to someone.

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

In Germany, they all thought I was a bit mental, very emotional.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

If you can’t hear me, it’s because I’m in parentheses.

I kind of love Cole Miller.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

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

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Fear is real, but so is love.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

‚No comment‘ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

I don’t have faith in young people any more. I don’t waste time trying to communicate with them.

Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

You can stroke people with words.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.