I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.

I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.

We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

Every invention eventually becomes obsolete.

I think the word is counter-productive. Capitalism is counter-productive to art, just as the Catholic Church was counter-productive to art four hundred years ago.

I was always totally convinced that three weeks after the revolution they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.

You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.

I was exactly having fun. I was stone miserable, but I wasn't hating doing it; I was loving doing it, but it's just damaged and warped.

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest.

Because if being a badass was easy everyone would do itLexy of Ankh(The Dragon)"Enlightenment

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.

The Doors embodied—incarnated—a major upheaval in popular culture. Their music was of the times and it shaped the times.

The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn't saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more, it was just too much for me.

In our pledge every day, we pledge one Nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

True patriotism doesn't exclude an understanding of the patriotism of others.

Building your own business is the best way to become rich. Then you can begin investing in other assets.