Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Art is the proper task of life.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It doesn’t always work, and one shouldn’t always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I like to be creative.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.