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

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.

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.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

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

All great achievements require time.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Once I’ve decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

You fail only if you stop writing.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

You throw batting practice, you warm up pitchers, you sit and cheer. You do whatever you have to do to stay on the team.

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

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

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

Meditation is a vital practice to access conscious contact with your highest self.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

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.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

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

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

When I signed up for BFC, then-coach Ashley Westwood wanted me to play on the left as an attacking midfielder. I was not sure initially but I believed in his vision. For the first six-seven games, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was like a headless chicken. But he kept backing me.

I create stars.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Good luck has its storms.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.