If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

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

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

I’m an inventor.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

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

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

When we speak of faith – the faith that can move mountains – we are not speaking of faith in general but of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

Who’s my hero? That’s a great question… Well, I think my dad is my hero, because he’s someone I look up to every day.

My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn’t dare do themselves.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

Think off-center.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

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

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,‘ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‚Shake it off. Stop complainin‘. Stop grumblin‘. Stop cryin‘. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

All art is quite useless.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

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

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.

All art is but imitation of nature.

Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it’s different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He’s very quick.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‚believe in God‘ and ‚don’t give up‘ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.