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

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

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

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

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

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

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

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

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

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.

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

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

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

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

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.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

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.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

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

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.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

What really matters is how God sees me. He isn’t concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man’s soul.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

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.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

All art is quite useless.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

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

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.