Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

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

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

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

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

I call architecture frozen music.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

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

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let’s you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, ‚Well, put your hand over here.‘

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

My style influences my music and everything around me.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

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 used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

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

I draw from the crowd a lot.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

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

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

I believe in being an innovator.

But I do believe that there’s going to be a time where all movies are going to be made in 3D and it’s just going to be a given, and that is going to be an exciting time.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.