History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club.

That's the trouble with languages. They have to be learned.

Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die

Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man.

Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

We presuppose two things: that there is yet to be learned infinitely more than is now known, and that man can learn it.

Never accept the initial premise of the opposition.

No literature is sound, no philosophy of action workable, if it doesn't take a hard look at itself.

Generally, a desirable, practically attainable idea, suggested in prophecy, has a chance of forcing itself into reality by its very existence.

Immunity corrupts; absolute immunity corrupts absolutely.

Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods.

The brain is the hardware, and the mind is the software, with the totality always in action, hardware plus software.

I think there are lovely sunsets in hell—and that’s where my desire for you is sending me

Everybody knows life isn't worth living.

Suffering... We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness.

I was going through some emotional turmoil. You can tell by the tunes on the album that I was going through a break-up of my marriage. It was the only way I could express myself.

My definition of genius is not being that person the actual human is a genius, but it's a person that just allows God to work through them.

A name is so important. A surname connects you to your past, to your family. Even a given name has meaning - why did your parents pick that particular one?

I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?

Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.