Necessity… the mother of invention.

But Apple really beats to a different drummer. I used to say that Apple should be the Sony of this business, but in reality, I think Apple should be the Apple of this business.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

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.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

I create stars.

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.‘

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.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

You do projects with the hope they will be big and hope they will go beyond what you imagine.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

O, had I but followed the arts!

All art is quite useless.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

I’m not a futurist.

We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

Our goal is not to build a platform; it’s to be cross all of them.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

If that’s there, I believe that technology will probably step up to their part of it.

I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion – a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long – that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

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.

The artist in me cries out for design.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

Every artist wants something different out the game.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

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.

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

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

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

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.