“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”

People are bloody ignorant apes.

Better hope deferred than none.

All mankind is us, whether we like it or not.

Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.

There’s never an end for the sea.

My mistakes are my life.

There’s something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.

What are we doing here, that is the question.

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.

I gave up before birth.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits.

I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press?

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stick place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.

An idea is inevitably a coordination. It is a coming together of something that is separate or disorganized or incomplete. With an idea you begin to feel into the nature of that incompleteness.

The complexity of immigration as an issue begins with a basic human trait: we are reluctant to share.

In the beginning, I took on every opportunity because I was so determined to get my name and music out there. You can get your sleep, but honestly, your brain needs a break, too, and so many people forget that.

Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.