I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

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

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not.

What is once well done is done forever.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

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.

It’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

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

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

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test.

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.

The song ‚Innocent‘ is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

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.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

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.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

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

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

You either make dust or eat dust.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

Frustration is a sign I am acting independently. The more you try your own way, the tighter the doors will stay closed.