I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

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 think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

I believe in being an innovator.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

Beware the hobby that eats.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

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

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

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.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

During the season, most of my time to unwind is in my car ride home. When I get home, it’s being with my kids.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

I love tango, and I used to dance when I was young.

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I love the sea.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

You don’t have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

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

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.