I think the word is counter-productive. Capitalism is counter-productive to art, just as the Catholic Church was counter-productive to art four hundred years ago.

I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.

I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.

We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

Every invention eventually becomes obsolete.

I was always totally convinced that three weeks after the revolution they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.

You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.

I was exactly having fun. I was stone miserable, but I wasn't hating doing it; I was loving doing it, but it's just damaged and warped.

A lot of books in the self-help section of your bookstore really belong in the fiction section.

If your standards are low, you're going to stop pretty early on in the process.

A lot of people think I'm snotty. So what? They never asked me out when I was serving cheeseburgers.

However much we know about birth in general, we know nothing about a particular birth. We must let it unfold with its own uniqueness.

This is the year of Katrina and Iraq. How the war ends is more important than how it began. However you feel about the war, you have to be compassionate and loving towards our troops

Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail.

Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest.

Because if you're prepared and you know what it takes, it's not a risk. You just have to figure out how to get there. There is always a way to get there.

The history says quarterbacks get paid more than running backs, but I think it depends on the caliber of the player - what you're getting, not just what the position is.

Every morning when I awake, the greatest of joys is mine: that of being Salvador Dali.