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

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

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.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

O, had I but followed the arts!

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

All art is quite useless.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

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

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

I like being comfortable at airports, in flip-flops with no jewelry on.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

All of my music is honest.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

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 need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

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

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

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I’m not trying to be fashionable. Never was!

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

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 job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

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.

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.

I call architecture frozen music.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

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.

I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.

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.

If I hadn’t been a woman, I’d be a drag queen for sure. I like all that flair and I’d be dressing up in them high heels and putting on the big hair. I’d be like Ru Paul.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with Guess on it. I said, Thyroid problem?