Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they’re a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.

Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all of the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre.

I'm not against work, I think work is great, I work a lot; but if you want to play, the consequences must not be important.

I see a great lack of stories around. I bought six literary magazines and looked through them to see what people were doing. There wasn't a story in them. They were all about how poetic the feelings of the author were.

If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else.

Truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be ‘wrong’, which is what our education encourages us to believe.