I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

The thing that’s been really surprising about the evolution of Facebook is – I think then, and I think now – that if we didn’t do this, someone else would have done it.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

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

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.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

Imagination rules the world.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

A teacher should have a creative mind.

No. I mean those people really did something for designers I don’t think department stores can, could or should do still today. Today the world is different so you have to make it differently. There’s TV. There’s a lot of things.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

I’m a good teacher and am great at observation and picking out what’s wrong and fixing it.

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

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

Solutions are not the answer.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

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

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

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.

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.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

If that’s there, I believe that technology will probably step up to their part of it.

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

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

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.

You fail only if you stop writing.

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

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

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 wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

Take advantage of the years of pioneering efforts. You might find this boring, as the young want to rush head on, as it were.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

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

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

We will explore the mysteries of science and harness the power of technology and innovation. We will realise the opportunities of the digital world. Our youth will learn more from – and with – each other.