"In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that."

“I actually dream a lot of songs, and I try to be good about voice-memoing ideas.”

Source : "Ted Leo and Ben Arthur Discuss Carly Simon, Joyce Carl Oates, and the Touring Grind". Interview with Ben Arthur, logger.believermag.com. June 26, 2016.

“I consider what I write to be literature. I choose the words carefully.”

“What we have is North Korea still pursuing path to a nuclear weapon state. So the majority of people's trust in North Korea has gone down considerably.”

“Most of my albums have a concept. They all have some kind of theme, some kind of feeling. I really take pride in that.”

“Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfalled with disaster; There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so! As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master, And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe, We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere, The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago.”

Source : Robert W. Service (2012). “Robert W. Service: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.50, Dundurn

“Age helps one to acquire some of the perspectives necessary to create harmony among apparent contradictions.”

“There is a strange idea aboard, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit, on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan.”

“If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable loneliness, are too unbearable for anyone who doesn't have a deep sense of being unable to avoid writing.”