Stories always have held conflicts and contrasts, highs and lows, life and death situations. And there can be much suffering in stories, but now we say the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand the human condition, understand the suffering.

When you get an idea and you fall in love with it there's not a whole lot of choice. You're going down a street and you meet this girl and you know it doesn't have to make any sense. Bingo! You're in love.

Forget being the best of anything. That's the fruit of the action, and you do the work -they say- for the doing, not the fruit. You can never really know how it's gonna turn out in the world but you know if you enjoy doing it. And ideas start flowing and you start getting, you know, excited about stuff. Then you're having a great time in the doing and that's what it's all about. If you don't enjoy the doing, then do something else.

There is an ocean of creativity within every human being.

Every single person has within an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness. Every single human being can experience that - infinite intelligence, infinite creativity, infinite happiness, infinite energy, infinite dynamic peace.

These growth hormones, where can I get a bunch of them? Is there some way that, with electricity, you could stimulate your own growth hormones? Plug yourself in for five minutes, there'd be a little jolt, but you'd get used to it. It wouldn't be bad at all; in fact, you'd get to enjoy it, probably. Then away you'd go, and youth wouldn't be wasted on the young anymore. You'd be 25, with a 95-year-old mind. Granddad would start breaking into liquor stores and staying out late. Hope we have it soon!

I have smoked marijuana, but I no longer do. I went to art school in the 1960s so you can imagine what was going on. Yet my friends were the ones who said, "No, no, no, David, don't take those drugs." I was pretty lucky.