I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 - for albums, anyway.

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

If I never wake again, I certainly will have lived while I was alive.

And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through.

I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.

I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them...The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey.

The end comes when the infinites arrive.

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.

Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues.

If you can do nothing else, do whatever is in your power to make the people in your life feel completely unashamed of who they are.

Most people are boring and stupid.

Whatever comes to your consciousness is what you act out.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

Art is a subset of creativity.

I am single and happy.

To [man] it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills.

That's what I spend most of my time doing, breathing a lot. I like air.

It is alright to trust. But trust comes with responsibility.

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.