I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

The concept of commercialism in the fashion and art world is looked down upon. You know, just to think, ‚What amount of creativity does it take to make something that masses of people like?‘ And, ‚How does creativity apply across the board?‘

Hip hop has always been braggin‘ and boasting and ‚I’m better at you than this‘ and ‚I’m better at you than that.‘

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.

The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don’t understand the software parts of it. And so you really can’t make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple’s the only company that has everything under one roof.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

An active investor is someone who actually lives off their investments as opposed to wages from a job.

Our favorite holding period is forever.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

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.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

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.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

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

Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

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

I like being a writer.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

There is spontaneity to my work.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

We’re taking all of the lessons that we have from New Shepard and incorporating them into New Glenn.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

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

I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.

I’ve tried different things through the years to get some play on mainstream. I’ll try to tailor-make it.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.