You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

Every youth movement presents itself as a loan to the future, and tries to call in its lien in advance, but when there is no future all loans are canceled.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

If you give up on a big dream too early, you have probably stepped on gold and mistook it for a rock.

Colors are light's suffering and joy

The mind thinks thoughts that we don't plan. It's not as if we say, 'At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.

Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant.

nonlinear interactions almost always make the behavior of the aggregate more complicated than would be predicted by summing or averaging.

He was a puzzle. And Hyacinth hated puzzles. Well, no, in truth she loved them. Provided, of course, that she solved them.

Come around, feel the sound. Know you make my heart pound. Fill me up, bring me down; when I hear your sound.

What other thing, Eve?" "I love you. Sometimes it makes my stomach hurt, but I kind of like it. Tired now, come to bed. Love you.

When you're on an ensemble show and you're messing around with everybody every day and you're not in every scene, and then all of a sudden you're in every scene, it's rough.

Passion drives perfection.