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

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

Kissing someone is pretty intimate, actually very intimate, and your heart always kind of skips a beat before you do that.

Love is a state of being.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Originality is really important.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Some people love so hard that they can’t control those emotions when they’re at their deepest point.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

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.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

A yawn is a silent shout.

All good art is an indiscretion.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Think off-center.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

I dote on his very absence.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

All of my writing is God-given.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.