Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

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.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

All art is but imitation of nature.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

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

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good… Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

It’s honestly true that money means nothing to me.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

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

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated, I would be a damn fool.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

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

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

I like to be creative.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

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

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.

An artist or a creative person of any kind goes about their work because it’s their path, it’s what excites them, it’s what aligns their soul with who they truly are, who they showed up to be.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

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

I’m always disappointed when people don’t live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Never confuse motion with action.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

Even when you’re 50, you can make the effort to improve your standards.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.