Fit for kings, formal gardens afford an earthly Elysium and the odd impression that we mere men might actually control nature for a time.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.

The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.

Properly we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.

Prudence says one thing, desire says another, and I'd rather go with desire any time.

In my dorm room, I was a hermit making music, I've always had a sense of urgency that I don't have forever to make this happen.

My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons.

Wherever the storm carries me, I go a willing guest.

The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air.

I hope to someday live in a world where there are lots more Silicon Valleys.

There is no such thing as separation of church and state. It is merely a figment of the imagination of infidels.

What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.