I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

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

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

I believe in being an innovator.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

I didn’t die young. So I am very lucky. There are other artists and people that didn’t survive certain things… people can imagine that I did the most dangerous, and I did the worst… for many reasons, I shouldn’t be here.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

The truth of the matter is that Iran is a cancer.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

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.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

I told y’all I didn’t vote, right? But if I would’ve voted, I would’ve voted for Trump.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

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.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

I don’t think President Trump is a racist.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

There is spontaneity to my work.

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

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

Imagination rules the world.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

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

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.