All good art is an indiscretion.

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.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

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’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

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

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

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

I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.

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.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Lettin‘ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ‚n puttin‘ it back in.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

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

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

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

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

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.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

A letter does not blush.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

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

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.