Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

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.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

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.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

What we think, we become.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

The soul is your innermost being. The presence that you are beyond form. The consciousness that you are beyond form, that is the soul. That is who you are in essence.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

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.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

Our words will either bring life and victory or death and destruction. If we want to be happy, we have to be serious about speaking words of life that line up with God’s Word.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.