There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

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

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

Think off-center.

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

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

O, had I but followed the arts!

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

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

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

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.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

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

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

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

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

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

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

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.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Genius, when young, is divine.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

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.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

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