“To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing – a hand worker in an era of mass production.”

To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.

Wherever people feel safe – they will be indifferent.

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.

Sanity is a cozy lie.

The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.

The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.

Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.

If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.

It took time to really build myself a reputation as a good live performer, a musician and an artist.

Some of you are doomed to be artists.

What people don’t understand is that how you are as an artist depends on how you are emotionally.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I’m home.

Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you’re doing. If you’re not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.

You can tell an honest artist from one who’s just given all their songs.

I love my body. I’m very much OK with it. I don’t think artists are ever the ones who have the problem with their weight, it is other people.

The center of the stage is where I am.