For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

In my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.

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.

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Therapy? I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant – Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world – including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

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

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

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

Young people can create beautiful things.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Imagination decides everything.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

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

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

Consciously or unconsciously most of us adhere to what is expected of our role because we realize our social success depends on this. Some may refuse to play this game, but in the end they are marginalized and forced to play the outsider role, with limited options and decreasing freedom as they get older.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

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.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

Where liberty is, there is my country.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.