A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.

If I make a mistake and finish 10th when we should have finished ninth, then I will be unhappy.

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.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

There’s no formula.

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.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

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

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

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

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

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.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

The importance of logo into today’s fashion is un! be! Lievable!

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

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

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.