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.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

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.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

Imagination decides everything.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

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.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

God doesn’t dwell in the wooden, stony or earthen idols. His abode is in our feelings, our thoughts.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

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

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

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.

When I got somethin‘ to say, I’ll say it.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

Farewell, fair cruelty.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

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.‘

We want to do a lot of stuff; we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

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

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.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

Love is an interesting thing.

I suffer from deep depression, so my only release is music.

Falling in love and having a relationship are two different things.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Overnight stardom can be harmful to your mental health. Yeah. It has ruined a lot of people.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

I married my best friend that happens to be a girl.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.