I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

I try to do the fancy things out there by going with both hands, making crossover moves, and having a certain creativity and flair to my game.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

Young people can create beautiful things.

I am an introvert; privately I am very shy, and I don’t speak unless I have to.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

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

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

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

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

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.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.

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

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

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.

I’m sticking to the script, I’m putting that organic feeling back in the game.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.