If you start from a position of I'm a no-hoper, in a paradoxical kind of way you are not risking being vulnerable.

A relapse doesn't mean you'll never walk down the path you prefer. But I think relapses are almost an inevitable part of any course of self-development.

If we think of our brains as a map, those early roads are like grooves, tram tracks, easy to fall into.

In order to stretch ourselves we do need to experience the vulnerability of not knowing the outcome.

Our emotional map is laid down mainly in relationship with our earliest caregiver in the first couple of years of life.

If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle.

A sense of achievement improves general confidence and self-esteem.

I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.

There are probably times where the creative process is not helped by collaboration.

Two brains are better than one. You've twice the brain capacity and you have two sets of experiences and genes to bring to any challenge.

The trouble is if we take no new steps to try a new challenge, our comfort zone doesn't seem just to stay still, but retract.

But it would be like going to Heaven and not finding any of your friends there. Her life would go all beatific and empty in the eyes.

The eclipses ofpoets are not foretold in the calender.

The strengthening of faith, I think, is the ultimate goal of organized religion altogether.

I want to be able to just act and never do any interview, but I don't have the balls to stand up to the studio and say, "I'm never doing another interview in my life!"

Maybe you've got the patience to work out some complicated, long-term, ironic way to get back at the people who've wronged you, but that's you.

I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.

But I listen to live recordings of things that I did back in the '70s and then how I've done things since. And there's no doubt about it: if I compare the two, it's like chalk and cheese.

I think I'm becoming a psychologist in explaining the Republican Party. It's the only way you can explain 'em. It's psychological.

Youth, even in its sorrows, always has a brilliancy of its own.