Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

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

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

Google’s done a super good job on search; Apple’s done a great job on the IPod.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

All of my music is honest.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

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.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

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

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents‘ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

I really wanted to break the mold of what modern touring is right now.

I am the freest author in the world.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‚crash‘ when we tried to use them.

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

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.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

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

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

I’ve discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that’s already there.

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.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

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.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.