Size is relative. If everyone is fat, no-one is fat

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.

God made you a masterpiece - be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.

I think I've always approached making albums pretty much the same way. I'm just looking for a mixture of songs and topics that aren't the same thing over and over.

I think Whitman more than any other poet possessed the gift of revealing to others the beauty of everything around us, the beauty of nature, the beauty of human beings.

If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.

Who I am musically I hope will just keep changing and changing.

In the matter of animals I love only cats, but I love them unreasonably for their qualities and in spite of their numerous faults. I have only one, but I could not live without a cat.

Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.

The fuses had been lit and could not be extinguished. All that remained was to observe the speed of the spark, and the size of the explosions.

Fear and hope are alike underneath.

In pubs across the land, the customers speak of little else but lunar nutation, especially since the moon is nutating at this very moment.