One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I think Mozart’s operas ‚The Marriage of Figaro‘ and ‚Don Giovanni‘ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

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

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Truth is a pathless land.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

You need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

Life is a song to me.

There are many things that I don’t understand.

We must use time creatively.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

I’m an inventor.

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.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Doing music to pay bills is an uncomfortable situation. I never wanted to be in that situation.

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.