“I give so much pleasure to so many people. Why can I not get some pleasure for myself?”

“There is so much a man can tell you,
So much he can say.
You remain, my power, my pleasure, my pain”

“The ability… to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom… the pleasure in trying out and exploring imaginary situations. A child's play is concerned with this pleasure; and so is much of art, and much of science… [P]ure science… is a form of play, in this sense.”

“So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.”

“I sit at my table en grand seigneur,
And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, one’s self, of good living,
But also the pleasure of now and then giving.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.”

“I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you.”

“When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.”

“One of my greatest pleasures in life is promising myself I will not drink, or smoke, or take coke, or do heroin, or eat cookies, then doing it. It’s a pleasure that can be repeated daily.”

“We enjoy no pleasure so much as we do tormenting ourselves.”

“If you can give someone the pleasure of not liking you, maybe that’s as valid as the pleasure of liking you, some people want to assert themselves by showing the things they don’t like. It’s a form of positioning yourself. We all do that. I get it. But I’m more focused on the people who do like what we do, and there’s a few of them. I like hanging out with those people. If you ever liked Coldplay, then we’re going to really deliver on our promise over the next year or so. It’s not guarded music. It’s about very open things and that might not resonate with some people. But I don’t want to obscure our music behind coolness or cynicism just to avoid criticisms. Because for some people it really connects, and I need it, too.”