Only in the most unusual cases is it useful to determine whether a book is good or bad; for it is just as rare for it to be one or the other. It is usually both.

And what would you do, ... if you could rule the world for a day? I suppose I would have no choice but to abolish reality.

There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

One does what one is; one becomes what one does.

If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.

Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.

One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.

Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

The thought is not something that observes an inner event, but, rather it is this inner event itself. We do not reflect on something, but, rather, something thinks itself in us.

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

I think this man is a bit crazy, but aren’t we all a little crazy anyway?

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

I'm tired of hyphenated Americans.

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods.

You find out what's in you when it comes out

I am talking about poetry. It's like that line from [John] Yeats: I go back to "where all the ladders start/ In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

And so I was doing that and starving and somebody said you should model and I ran when they told me how much money you could make and I did a television commercial the first job.

Gord Downie is extraordinary. It's safe to say there's nobody like that guy that I've ever come across.

I resist the temptation to curate my apartment.