I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

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.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

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

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

The song ‚Innocent‘ is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

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?

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

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.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

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.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

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.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

Writing ‚We Are Never Getting Back Together‘ was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

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

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

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.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

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.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

I play a lot of instruments. I write all my own music. I spend hours and hours a day in the studio. I’m a producer. I’m a writer.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

Few people have the imagination for reality.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

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?

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.