All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

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 have the space and liberty to create.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

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.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I wanted to write.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

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.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

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

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

I’m always secretly the most pleased when a show just really, really looks good and when my camera guys are really happy with the images they got.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

I ran into Isosceles. He had a great idea for a new triangle!

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

Frank Lloyd Wright… his things were beautiful but not very functional.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‚Nice doggie‘ until you can find a rock.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

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

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Genius, when young, is divine.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

I think there’s a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.

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.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.