I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

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

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

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

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

The art is long, life is short.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

Frank Lloyd Wright… his things were beautiful but not very functional.

O, had I but followed the arts!

All art is but imitation of nature.

It takes me about two hours to run into Target. People always want a picture. They hem and haw, and they can’t spit the words out, so they waste about five minutes of my time just standing there getting ready for a picture. Just do it!

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

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.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

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.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

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

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

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

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

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

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.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I don’t go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, ‚Let’s see if I can get this done today.‘

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

Everybody asks if putting is like shooting free throws. It has a very similar kind of mindset. And it’s just you, the ball, and the target.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

All good art is an indiscretion.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

All art is dependent on technology because it’s a human endeavour, so even when you’re using charcoal on a wall or designed the proscenium arch, that’s technology.

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

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

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

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

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

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.