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.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

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.

You don’t have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

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

Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I want to make something that is breathtaking. Of course, you can’t make something that is always breathtaking, or you would never be able to breathe. You would collapse.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

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.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

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.

All of my music is honest.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

I’m an inventor.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

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.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I like to be creative.

From an eternal perspective, the only death that is truly premature is the death of one who is not prepared to meet God.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

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

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

It’s the way I study – to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and me at all. I think we would both prefer that they didn’t become actors.

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

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

My favorite movies of all times is ‚Doctor Zhivago,‘ and I love ‚Gone With the Wind.‘ I’d love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

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

All of the Vines that were acted & setup & had nice cameras, those weren’t the good Vines. The good Vines were, like, a random little kid in the middle of a forest, like, yelling.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.