Imagination rules the world.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

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

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

Always do whatever’s next.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

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.‘

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

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

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

What keeps me motivated is love and passion.

Genius, when young, is divine.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

My imagination is a twisted place.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

From the boys‘ point of view, scouting puts them into fraternity-gangs, which is their natural organisation, whether for games, mischief, or loafing; it gives them a smart dress and equipments; it appeals to their imagination and romance; and it engages them in an active, open-air life.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

The way to know life is to love many things.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Muhammad Ali is a legend, a hero of mine.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

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.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.