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

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

I’m an inventor.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Music is in my DNA!

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

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.

Oh yes, I love to do shoes. I’m not a fetishist but I love to do shoes.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

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.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

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.

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.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Imagination rules the world.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

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

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

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

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

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.

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

Genius, when young, is divine.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

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

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.