Without an element of vulgarity, no man can be a work of art...I have to try and think what an artist is, apart from a hooligan who cannot live within his income of praise.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.

Vice is its own reward.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.

Elegance comes from being as beautiful inside as outside.

I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.

The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.

I think the best way people can connect to you is by being real

Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.

You may only get one chance at something...and that requires confidence in your ability.

There's only one sort of natural blonde on earth - albinos.

Every reader his or her book. Every book its reader.

You know, I never did music for money. I did music to hear myself in the club, and to hear my creation on the radio.