I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

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.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

I call architecture frozen music.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

I made all my generals out of mud.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

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

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

You fail only if you stop writing.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

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.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

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.

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

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

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.

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

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

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

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

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?

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

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