“Then he said in his most excellent Mick impression, “Your powers are useless against Ninja Lords, O great zombie hunter! Surrender or feel the sting of the shuriken!”

Paul ripped off John’s right arm and used it to slap John across the face, then he said, “Those’re horrible, mate, just horrible, y’know.

I said to him, “State your business, mortal!” There was no need for me to call him “mortal” or to speak like a sixteenth-century knight. It just sounded cool.

George had taken off all ten of his fingers and tied them into a bundle with what appeared to be either his own small intestines.

The Deads-men, the Deadmen, the Undeads-men, the Undeadmen, the Rots, the Rotters, the Dirts, the Dirty Ones, the Grayboys, the Eaten Brains, the Eating Brains, the Mersey Beaters, the Mersey Beaten, the Bloodless, the Graves, the Headstones, and the Liverpools of Blood.

John showed up to rehearsal with a long list of name suggestions, and I remember each and every one of them.

Or a guitar string; as I walked into the room, he lovingly placed the bundle on his head.

George Harrison: The day after the Blue Angel audition.

Striving is exhausting. Sometimes I do say things like, ‘I wish I were not quite this driven to be excellent.’ It’s not a comfortable life. It’s not relaxed. I’m not relaxed as a person. I mean, I’m not unhappy. But… it’s the opposite of being comfortable.

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.

By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself.

Not to be cheered by praise, not to be grieved by blame, but to know thoroughly one’s own virtues or powers are the characteristics of an excellent man.

This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

Just how do I design if not with prototyping? An excellent question. The short answer is ‘on paper.’

Science is an excellent piece of furniture to have in the second story, providing that you have common sense on the ground floor.