"Nothing was working, and my friend was dead, and I didn't want to look at that."

“I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ***** to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette.”

“You've got to enjoy time with your family and friends, and if you're involved in sports franchises, those peak moments in playoff games. You have to enjoy life.”

Source : "Paul Allen: He talks Trail Blazers, Microsoft, 'The Social Network'". Interview with Jeff Baker, www.oregonlive.com. April 19, 2011.

“I did not agree..to having my article censored. ...The published report of the conference gives my name as a participant, but you will not find in it the paper I read. ...Scientists as a group are no more, and no less, influenced by emotional and irrational reactions than other people are.”

“I say that there is nothing deficient about our current theoretical grasp of mind-brain identities. The problem is only that they are counter-intuitive.”

Source : "Physical". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 8, 2013.

“You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.”

“If you ain't trying to cheat a little, you ain't likely to win much.”

“At the end of our lives we hope we will look back and, like an incense stick completely burned away, will have poured forth all our fragrance into the world.”

“I just sang, recently, for the Prime Minister of Bangladesh - the 34th most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes Magazine. The United Nations had an event where her son got an award and they put me on this special program on competitiveness and sustainability, and we're talking about doing a world tour of me and the music.”