I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

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

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

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

I read poetry to save time.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

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

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

I’m interested in Jackson Pollock’s kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it’s nothing, and yet it’s incredible.

Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, ‚I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.‘

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.