I'd rather be just a Korean musician as opposed to, you know, a K-Pop musician.

I don’t want to be a person with full hands, resting from dreams, but a person full of dreams unable to rest his hands.

Maybe the start line was supposed to be your finish line. Don’t be afraid to walk backwards.

To be strong is to understand weakness. To be weak is to have fears. To have fears is to have something precious to you. To have something precious to you is to be strong.

Don't expect anything ordinary from me, i'm weird, and i like myself as i am

I’m afraid I’ll be a book that no one reads. Music that no one listens to anymore. I’m afraid I’ll be abandoned like a movie playing in an empty theater.

Some lessons are only delivered in the form of pain.

The star shines for everyone in the world, but in reality, it itself is surrounded in darkness.

Doesn't the world inside a black and white photograph seem more real? It's because the real world is losing its color

One reason why love songs are better than love itself is that you can replay them.

You lose yourself trying to hold on to someone who doesn't care about losing you

The measure of man's ability to extend the sphere of social possibility can only start with the values of democracy.

Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work.

Quoting, like smoking, ... is a dirty habit to which I am devoted. But then ... I am a professor of English literature; it is an occupational hazard.

I left my parents' home when I was 22, I moved to New York with my ex-girlfriend. We did a film together with Raul Julia.

If God has given you a message, go and give it to the people as God has given it to you. It is a stupid thing to try to be eloquent.

A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.

Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.

Play the hand you're dealt.

If somebody writes a great poem, people don't run around applauding the pencil, saying 'Oh, what a great pencil'...I'm a pencil in God's hands.

Every gun regulation that President [Barack] Obama has advocated for, California has already. And it didn't stop terrorism.