A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

I want to make something that is breathtaking. Of course, you can’t make something that is always breathtaking, or you would never be able to breathe. You would collapse.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

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.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past.

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

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

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

Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: ‚Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?‘

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

Never regret what you don’t write.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

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.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction – especially autobiographies and biographies. I’ve read ‚Long Walk to Freedom‘ by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I’m totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

My superhero has always been Tendulkar, and it will be Tendulkar for life. He is someone who has inspired me immensely. Just watching him play for India, I used to dream of winning games for India, because he used to do it single handedly.

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

I take inspiration from everyone and everything. I’m inspired by current champions, former champions, true competitors, people dedicated to their dream, hard workers, dreamers, believers, achievers.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

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.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

I wake up every day inspiring myself, because God gave me life.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.