I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Rap was my drug.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

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.

We love things we love what they are.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

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.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

I only act from my heart.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

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

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

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

And die of nothing but a rage to live.

I never wanted to stay in one genre; I never wanted to be pigeon-holed or defined as the actor who only worked in one genre. I want to be able to work in all different genres. For me it’s fun, and that’s how I grow as an actor.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

Music is like film to me.

We give speeches and pin ribbons onto uniforms, etch names into walls. And all that is fine, but too often, all those tributes, all those words aren’t always backed up by action. And that felt like such a stark contrast to me, because, as we all know, our military is all about action.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.

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

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

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.‘

All good art is an indiscretion.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.