“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”

“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”

“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

“What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.”

“The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.”

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.”

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

“Excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way.”

“The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.”

“Older men start wars, but younger men fight them.”

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”

“The environment is everything that isn't me.”

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

“Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.”

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”

“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

“There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it.”

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”

“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

“To see a world in a grain of sand.”

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

“It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”