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

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

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

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

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.

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

I wanted to write.

I like Cardi B!

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

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I’m interested in Jackson Pollock’s kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it’s nothing, and yet it’s incredible.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

It would be great to be 105 and still making films.

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

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

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

I believe that a trusting attitude and a patient attitude go hand in hand. You see, when you let go and learn to trust God, it releases joy in your life. And when you trust God, you’re able to be more patient. Patience is not just about waiting for something… it’s about how you wait, or your attitude while waiting.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Many people have an intense feeling about what they’re best at. Too often, they’re driven away from it by other people.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

When I say ‚Crush your enemy‘, I don’t literally mean it.

I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I’m very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I’m feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It’s gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

The exercise of benevolence is joy to loving hearts: the more pain it costs, the more joy it is. Kind actions make us happy, and in such joy we find communion with the great heart of Jesus.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.