History is prone to mistakes in identity, and facts are not always solid things.

People who are given whatever they want soon develop a sense of entitlement and rapidly lose their sense of proportion.

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

Facts might be false if they challenge the conviction of a mind already made up.

Art cannot, perhaps, impose order on life—but it teaches us to admire even the unruliest of revelations.

There is nothing that 'Sesame Street' can't teach you, if you let it.

Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld.

A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.

I had a lot of fans in New York. The press would write about me, but I couldn't get a paying job.

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul.

O my soul, I am now addressing myself to the greatest work that ever a creature was employed about - I am going into the solemn presence of God about business of everlasting importance!

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue.

Of all the songs that I've written since I was 15 or 16, every song is different every song is special, it happens in a different way and I like that.

It took me forty years of dealing with buddhism to finally realize that actually Buddha's discovery was happiness and bliss.

I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning.

My kids are doing just great.