A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

I do believe in the energy and the productivity of the American business world.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

Movies are not novels, and that’s why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can’t be done.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

Every artist was first an amateur.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

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

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

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

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 lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

I like to work.

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.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

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

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

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

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

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

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.