What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

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

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

The concept of commercialism in the fashion and art world is looked down upon. You know, just to think, ‚What amount of creativity does it take to make something that masses of people like?‘ And, ‚How does creativity apply across the board?‘

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

I am not a consecutive writer.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that’s it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called ‚The Truth‘.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.