Professional societies are sooner or later fractured by the ego of their leaders. Everyone wants to be president, chairman, CEO; no one wants to be a mere follower.

I envy those Hindus and Buddhists who have in their religion philosophy and ancestor worship which build in the believer a continuity with the past, and that most important ingredient in the building of a nation - memory.

My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little.

What is needed in the theater, in fact for all our art forms, is a vibrant critical tradition.

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.

I always say I want creative control. A lot of people don't think about that. And that's what every artist should think of - being creative and not just a puppet.

It's tough as an artist to have such a specific vision for your video in mind when you write a song. Reaching out to directors is like going on blind dates and trying to find someone who sees the exact vision behind your music, which can be really difficult.

It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.