A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

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

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I didn’t know the term ‚synesthesia‘ until I was working on ‚Cruel Summer.‘ Halfway into writing that, I really understood that, my entire life, I had been trying to describe this condition of mine: through painting, through this seven-screen Surround Vision film we shot in Qatar, through all these things.

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.‘

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

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

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

Life is short, the art long.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

I create stars.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I’m an inventor.

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

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

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.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

Think off-center.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

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.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.