We see them most when we are o nnthe outside looking in

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic.

And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.

Money chases good ideas

...the imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours, ' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.

In fact, most of us see perseverance as a distinctly uncreative approach, the sort of strategy that people with mediocre ideas are forced to rely on.

The benefit of such horizontal interactions - people sharing knowledge across fields - is that it encourages conceptual blending, which is an extremely important part of the insight process.

Insights, after all, come from the overlap between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted to a new domain.

Do not ever go out of yourself because you will get lost even from your life.

Momentarily drained of lust, he stares at the remembered contortions to which it has driven him. His life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purpose, a magic dance empty of belief.

I have tried to be righteous all my life. Yet I have never been content.

And after I make a lot of money, I'll be able to afford running for office.

I don't have any expectations.

To a traveler paying his first visit, [San Francisco] has the interest of a new planet. It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world.

All success in sports and athletics, from the Zen point of view, comes from the mind. No matter what kind of shape your body is in, there is disharmony in the being.

A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.

My family is awesome.

No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.