Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

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.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

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

To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

It’s not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

There is so much that people take for granted.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

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.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.