Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.
There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.
There's a tendency, especially among revolutionaries, to only show the good side of yourself and then when you come to power, the bad side comes out.
Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don't want people to know.
The Grime guys have kind of rewritten the blueprint for people as far as creativity, songwriting, ownership, doing your own videos... So they're sending out a real positive message I think to people, that you can do it yourself in a punk way, and you can still potentially be successful and get to people.
You have to keep challenging yourself. I've always tried to do that, and I'm not saying I've always been successful. Maybe I've rewritten the same song; it's inevitable, but I've always been mindful of taking the writing somewhere else. You can't stick in your little comfort zone.
It's an odd experience reading interviews with yourself. Interesting, though. Of course, you know that the journalist will have edited, rephrased or even rewritten what you actually said, but you can't help feeling that there's a special kind of truth in the way someone else paints you, however subjective they might be.
You must be independent and able to do for yourself. Then you do not have to marry a rich man; you can marry a poor one. And if it is wrong, you can go.
If you are a rich person straining every sinew to keep every last pound in your pocket, there comes a point when you realize you are not just escaping the clutches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. You are passing a greater burden on to people poorer than yourself, and depriving even poorer people of your support.
Raising your hand when you're not sure you have the right answer helps you take risks with your ideas and put yourself out there.
Being sick is a different story than having an injury. If you have a right arm injury, you can still use the rest of your body. You still have the energy to perform. But when you are sick and can't really get out of bed or walk or even breathe, you're not yourself. You don't have the cardio, strength, speed, or explosion.
You go through stages in your career that you feel very good about yourself. Then you feel awful, like, 'Why didn't I choose something else?' But overall I'm pretty satisfied that I made the right choice when I decided to be an actor.
If you can't motivate yourself to get up and play in front of 30,000-40,000 people, then you're not in the right job.
If you don't have the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an hour you can lose yourself.
The problem is that music is selfish in that you need to make it for yourself, so that you can give it away, and those two things don't jive. I needed to find the right reason to play that had the magic and mystery and excitement that made me want to play in the first place.
Once you accept and understand yourself, you do things for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, rather than being fuelled by your insecurities.
What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.
Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.
