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

The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

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.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

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.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

All of my music is honest.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Don’t overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.

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?

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Art is the proper task of life.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

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

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

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.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

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

I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.

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.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

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

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

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

For people who live in the suburbs and must commute long distances to work, their wealth will sink as energy prices rise.