If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes.

The love boat has crashed against the everyday.

Our planet is poorly equipped for delight. One must snatch gladness from the days that are. In this life it's not difficult to die. To make life is more difficult by far.

In the church of my heart the choir is on fire

Listen! If stars are lit It means there is someone who needs it, It means someone wants them to be, That someone deems those specks of spit Magnificent!

I want to be understood by my country, but if I fail to be understood - what then?, I shall pass through my native land to one side, like a shower of slanting rain.

Gentle souls! You play your love on the violin. The crude ones play it on the drums violently. But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me And become just two lips entirely?

On the pavement of my trampled soul the steps of madmen weave the prints of rude crude words.

But I, from poetry's skies, plunge into communism, because without it I feel no love.

Love's ship has foundered on the rocks of life. We're quits: stupid to draw up a list of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains.

Security doesn't rob ambition

The deepest wretchedness often results from a perpetual continuation of petty trials.

[Clowns] gotten a really bad rap in the last few years. People have really given into their own fears and have celebrated their fears in that way. American Horror Story didn't help.

One should never go back to a place one has loved; for, however, rough the going forward is, it is better than the snuffing out-of-love return.

If you can find the courage, if you have in your heart even the slightest bit of rebellion against injustice, maybe you can channel that and become a leader.

The trumpet is a very violent instrument - probably one of the most archaic of all the modern instruments. It's physically really demanding: you have to stay in pretty good shape.

The advancement of knowledge must be translated into increasing health and education for the children.

It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.

You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive.

A lot of my reading over the next few months will be the works of Hans Christian Andersen - I have been appointed an ambassador for the bicentenary celebrations of his birth next year.