I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.

Everybody experiences reality in a way that's only true for them.

This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.

It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life.

I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.

Normal adult shopping is something I will never actually do, because it's no more possible for me to go shopping like normal adults do than it is for a man with no legs to wake up one day and walk. I can't miss shopping like you'd miss things you once had. I miss it in a different way. I miss it like you would miss a train.

The fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind.