I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

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

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

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

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

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

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.

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

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

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.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.

I’ve had a fan who made a painting of my face with her fingers. I have put it up in my room. It was sweet and very different.

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.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

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 believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

O, had I but followed the arts!

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

I’ve used my femininity and my sexuality as a weapon and a tool… but that’s just natural.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

I want the world to see my body.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

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.‘

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

I’m not a sheep.