A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I create stars.

I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‚fat cat‘ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‚public-spirited philanthropist‘.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‚tough this and tough that.‘ Then there is this business about ‚gooey.‘ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

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.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

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

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

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.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

I feel that my fans have cultivated my talent and they continue to nurture me.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

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.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?