“A lot of artists use memories. A lot of prose writers, a lot of poets, a lot of songwriters, refer back to something. Generally it’s all you’ve got, unless you’re brilliant and can write totally in the now.”

I’m only 49 years old. I’m still in the middle of this whole thing. I don’t feel like it’s finished at all. I’m still planning to write better songs.

I think [Transcendental Meditation] is what people need. They don’t need high minded talk, they need results.

Be cool and you’ll be alright. That’s rock & roll religion.

There will be an answer. Let it be.

Every time I felt low, I just put on an Elvis record and I’d feel great, beautiful.

Painting is a magical process that I like, where you conjure something out of nothing; you get a little idea that leads you through. You can go into a trance while you’re doing it, so it’s a nice contrast to real life.

And what’s the point of changing when I’m happy as I am?

At the end of the Beatles, I really was done in for the first time in my life. Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod.

I realize now that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache.

When you got a job to do, you got to do it well. You gotta give the other fellow hell.

Animation is not just for children – it’s also for adults who take drugs.

I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.

When I write, there are times — not always — when I hear John (Lennon) in my head, I’ll think, OK, what would we have done here?, and I can hear him gripe or approve.

If children are studying the 20th century, I’m in their text books.

Bend like the willow, winds gonna blow you hard and cold tonight. Life as it happens, nobody warns you, willow hold on tight.

When we were starting off as kids, just the idea of maybe going to do this as a living instead of getting what we thought was going to be a boring job, was exciting.

The night glittered brilliantly then.

I love Ray Mears. He’s brilliant. He’s so rude about me in the press, it’s outrageous!

The experimental investigation by which Ampere established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the ‘Newton of Electricity’.

It isn’t easy being a brilliant inventor, always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed. -Hephaestus

Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister.

The Constitution is brilliant for accountability; for posing factions against each other, to fight amongst themselves in government, which protects our liberty. But also in ensuring that decision-making is made by those who the people can hold accountable.

We’re trendsetters, first to welcome brilliant inventions into our lives, from the microwave meal to Instagram.

A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.