My life is a discipline, a prison: I live for my own work, without which I am nothing.

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.

If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.

I ride earth's burning carousel. Day in, day out.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.

Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

Don't be surprised that I value prejudice, observe certain conventions, seek power--it's because I know I live in an empty society.

The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.

Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches.

Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive.

Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.

From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.

I'm a big Aqua fan. "Barbie Girl" was a big deal growing up.

The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge.

When I was growing up, the blues did seem too simple to me. I was just a muso.

We learn by making mistakes. If you genuinely want to have a multifaceted career that takes you into multiple industries, then I think you have to be willing to fail.