If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.

Don't be so busy missing people who left that you miss the people that are standing right in front of you.

Crazy people don't know they're crazy. I know I'm crazy, therefore I'm not crazy, isn't that crazy?

The higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.

I remember being banned from other houses as a younger child during the winter holiday season; I was the only one who didn't believe in Santa Claus, and I was ruining everyone's Christmas.

I go into town every day on the tube. I've got an Oyster card.

I go on vacation strictly to relax - to kick back with a good book and do nothing else but read, sleep and eat.

I'm in total control. I write the songs, decide what to sing and how to sing. I even control the recording process. But, with a film, there is no control at all.

Fate carries its own clock.

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.