Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.

The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.

No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.

What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?

I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

You can't make every wrong decision right but you can stop deciding to take another wrong action.

Just when you think we're living in a little bit of a divided world, music brings us together.

The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.

The history of mathematics is a history of horrendously difficult problems being solved by young people too ignorant to know that they were impossible.

What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?

If you're going to start something-if it's worth starting-then it's worth finishing. That's what I live by.

[The writer] wants both to do the best possible work and also to reach the largest possible audience. The result is a fairly normal condition of discouragement.

My theory is because I'm Asian and white I sort of look like the future. I'm the melting pot.

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy.