The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

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

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

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.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Sometimes I just sit still and enjoy God’s presence.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

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.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

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.

You fail only if you stop writing.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

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

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

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

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

What we live by we die by.

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.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

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