I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Love is a mental madness.

An eye for an eye makes you feel happy inside...- unless you're the second eye

I have music inside me and I'm very lucky to be able to play music and that's the way that I try to do it.

Peace is not just the absence of violence,peace is when the flowers bloom.

Letting go of its good players, like Özil, the ones who know how to play football – that did surprise me.

When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this.

I always put my identity at the forefront of my music.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

Now more people are doing work that requires individual decision-making and problem-solving, and we need an educational system that will help develop those skills.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.