The arts don’t exist in isolation.

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.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

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

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

I first met Bev Shea while in Chicago when he was on Moody Radio. As a young man starting my ministry, I asked Bev if he would join me. He said yes, and for over 60 years we had the privilege of ministering together across the country and around the world.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

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

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

I made the track ‚Si Tu Novio Te Deja Sola‘ before I met Balvin.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

I have surrounded myself with very smart people.

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.

The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.

I’m a painter in sound.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

You can’t choose up sides on a round world.

The citizens of Tumortown are forever assailed with cures and rumors of cures.

I’ve come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

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.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

I advocate that every woman be a part of a circle, and a circle that meets at least once a month, or if you can’t do that, once every two months or every four months.

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

The Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

The connectivity declaration is about uniting the whole industry – a lot of companies that typically compete very fiercely – to push in a coherent direction.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

London is a roost for every bird.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

All art is but imitation of nature.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.