You have to put yourself to one side and get away from the 'Victorian poet' model where you are the universe. You have to do everything you can to take your ego out of the equation.

Sometimes people say I should see a therapist, but I don't want any therapist wrecking my weirdness.

Of course, your ideas can be stolen... I used to think it was immoral; now I think of it as a compliment... Ultimately, an idea isn't yours; it's only your take on something.

If you have a success, the terror is how on earth can you follow it up.

You have to get something down, and then find ways of working in complexity and different layers of meaning... My first drafts are usually the ravings of a delusional fantasist.

It's important to balance the drudgery with inspiration. It's a nightmare if you are just existing in the present project - you don't feel a sense of your own growth.

My journey is technical complexity.

My big struggle has been how to expand my mind without being able to expand my physical experience of the world.

I was like one of those people who is allergic to the twentieth century... I'd been brought up to think there was some order to things, but there was no safety net. Doctors accused me of being mad.

Integrity is a most valued human quality.

Modesty, not temper.

«Couldn't never be nothin' but a nig*er, if I was ever so good, » said Topsy. «If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.»

Cowan son of Branieucc, you're the only one of my people that I know for sure still lives.

Gaining heaven, being delivered from sin, and being made useful to God are things that should never even be a consideration in real surrender.

I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, and I will be a liberal 'til the day I die.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.

If you have conflicts, everything breaks down in society. Kids can't go to school. Basic health can't be looked after. Every aspect of society falls apart.

It seems everyday I find a new road, a new person that can help my cycling better and help me understand more things. I compare cycling to life often.

Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.