By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It’s also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

I’ve tried different things through the years to get some play on mainstream. I’ll try to tailor-make it.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

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

The real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

With tech companies, whoever’s the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, ‚Is this the end of them?‘ And – there’s more – more times people think that’s the case than it really is the case.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

I can no longer type, so I use TalkingPoint and Dragon Dictate. It’s a speech-to-text program, and there’s an add-on for talking which some guys came up with.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

My task over the last two years hasn’t just been to stop the bleeding. My task has also been to try to figure out how do we address some of the structural problems in the economy that have prevented more Googles from being created.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

For me, when you are have people wondering what is next, what is coming out, you are on the right track.

You cannot make a giant space company in your dorm room. Not today. And the reason is that the heavy lifting infrastructure isn’t in place.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

We must use time creatively.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Entrepreneurs are natural problem-solvers, which means that we always have ideas for new businesses popping into our heads. Having a lot of options is great, but sometimes it can be hard to focus on one when you are keen to move onto the next.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it’s like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.