“Happiness is overrated and money can’t justify it.”

Composing was more difficult than writing things down.

We’re all competent in different ways, we’ve just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.

I’m from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn’t really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it’s totally wrong.

I was very rebellious, but my family was strict Christians – they would ask us, “What’s the shortest verse in the Bible?” and I was the one who always said “John 11:35” straightaway. It stayed with me, the Bible has stayed with me.

You can’t judge people by their cover.

William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician.

I like it when cities are melancholic. When it started snowing for example, I felt very lonely. I felt very comfortable and very relaxed. When that happens, I write. So I’ve been writing, not a lot, but I’m inspired everyday.

I loved English literature – if didn’t it would have been hard – but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines.

That’s how I always try to start my thoughts. I write them down first, eventually it turns into a poem, and if I feel like composing something to it, then I do that.

The real self is who you are when you’re at home, when you’re comfortable, and the false self is what you’re pretending – and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you’re within.

Obviously you live life for yourself and have your choice to believe what you want to believe in, but I know that the Bible can be used to appreciate life.

If you’ve got great parents, once you grow up and have to live by yourself, you’re going to create some fake self as you get comfortable wherever you are.

When you have a lot of fake selves, most of the time it’s because you haven’t had parents around so you try to build characters to protect yourself.

There’s a part in every person that has a fake self. We’ve had this since infancy due to our parents and our upbringing.

[My music] is opposite to fashion.

The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him.

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.

Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.

She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

Are you living to justify yourself, or are you living because you are justified?

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.