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.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

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.

All art is but imitation of nature.

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

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

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

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

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

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

I’m an inventor.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

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.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

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.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

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

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

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

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

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

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

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

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.