For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Life is too short not to celebrate nice moments!

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

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.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

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

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.