Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

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

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

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.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

I was reared in the church, in the Presbyterian Church.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

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.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

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

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.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

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

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

I remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn’t happen, but other planets.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I believe in being an innovator.