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

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.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

If I had remained in Lhasa, even without the Chinese occupation, I would probably have carried the ceremonial role in some orthodox way.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Many people in the western world are spoiled by the conveniences of our culture.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

I’ve tried different things through the years to get some play on mainstream. I’ll try to tailor-make it.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

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 thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

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

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

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

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

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

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.