I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

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’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

All of my music is honest.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

I’m in the game of spinning plates. I’m spinning a boxing plate. I’m spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I’m spinning a Jujitsu plate. I’m spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I’m spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

Women can’t do everything at the same time, we need to understand milestones in our lives comes in segments.

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

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

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

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

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

I’m interested in Jackson Pollock’s kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it’s nothing, and yet it’s incredible.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

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

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.