It is important that China stop its over-reliance on municipal debt to finance infrastructure. I take comfort in the fact that China's leaders understand this.

I would come to New York, work, and then get out of New York. I didn't go out to dinner with other people on the Management Committee. I didn't socialize. I didn't politick.

When you're boiling in oil, in the middle of a crisis, the challenges are so consuming there is no time for anything else.

Size is the enemy of excellence in investment banking, particularly when you are trying to put together two different cultures.

The cheapest and cleanest energy is the energy you don't use.

If AIG collapsed, it would have buckled our financial system and wrought economic havoc on the lives of millions of our citizens.

Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.

I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures. It puts my mind in a different place than October. It is a month for a quieter, slightly more subdued celebration of summer's death as winter tightens its grip.

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor.

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own.

It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.

Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.

Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.

The month of November makes me feel that life is passing more quickly. In an effort to slow it down, I try to fill the hours more meaningfully.

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.

Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.

When you are young, there is so much ahead of you, it's like the Saharan desert. You can't even see across it.

I am on until I am dead, like a light bulb.

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.

If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene.

Nothing brings people together more, then mutual hatred.

When people hold you in high esteem, it's very delicate relationship. When they meet you they're putting all their chips up. It's make or break.

Pizza makes me think that anything is possible.

You must never lower yourself to being a person you don't like.

I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.

Maybe I'm just a psycho, and the stage is a better place to go than either the loony bin or somewhere else.

In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.

Now, if someone wants to spit on me, I just roll up the window of my BMW 540i.

When you start to doubt yourself the real world will eat you alive.

There is not one single police officer in America that I am not afraid of and not one that I would trust to tell the truth or obey the laws they are sworn to uphold. I do not believe they protect me in any way.

I like boring black and white films with subtitles. I'm basically a drip.

I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it's good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation.

I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light, If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.

I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave - it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box.

The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.

Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter.

Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.

To this day, my haircut is the number two clippers, which I apply to myself every month.

I think young people should travel and travel often to other countries... like I do.

Never once have I thought that Social Security would be something that would ever be available to me.

Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.