I realized I was not a great musical technician, if I was going to make anything interesting it would have to come from the creative side of me and not the craft side of me.

It's all easier said than done, and it isn't even easy to say.

I prefer artists who are creative more than artists who are technical, I think everybody would agree with that.

I think the benefits are tremendous, and the power of accessibility in art is one of it's most explosive and insidious attributes.

I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.

Everybody has a direct view of the person "behind" the art, so there is going to be a certain amount of awareness of who is making songs. But I like paintings where you can see the brush-strokes.

Unfortunately most easily-digested entertainment has as much actual content as a Spongebob Squarepants episode, so the trick is to try to fit actual nourishing content into enjoyable entertainment.

To be entertaining and educational and enlightening, all at once, this is a good goal to have.

In the past, Koreans have mostly copied other countries' engines, and so there's been kind of a problem with quality and a real limit on what they could do with that.

I usually think of art as having a measurable content of nourishment, whether factual or emotional or whatever, and I try to make sure that whatever I do has as much nourishment as I can muster.

A great artist can change society because of the entertaining and mesmerizing quality of his or her art.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

Do I think it's OK to fight authority as long as you're only talking about the high school teacher? No.

I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home.

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.

Them that has china plates themsel's is the maist careful not to break the china plates of others

The prosperous man does not know whether he is loved.

I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding.

I am 82 years old. I imagine that I will keep on writing as long as anyone wants to keep reading.

That's not writing, that's typing