And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

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.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

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

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Fear is exciting for me.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

‚No comment‘ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

Love is a serious mental disease.

I’m a painter in sound.

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.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

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

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

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.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

I have no human feelings.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

There’s no formula.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.