A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

I am not designed to come second or third. I am designed to win.

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.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

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

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We’re in a very self-destructive state where we’re addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

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

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

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 feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

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.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

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

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

When I say something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

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.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.