But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

I think sim racing helps. I have improved in areas and do it whenever I need to improve. You don’t feel G-force and those things are probably the biggest things, that and the fear factor which you feel when you drive. Therefore, when I go on to the track I’m better.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

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.

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.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

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.

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

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

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

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

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

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

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

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

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

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

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

There’s no formula.

I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.

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

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

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.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

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 am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.