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

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.

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 love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

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.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

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.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

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.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

There has to be something in every role that interests you.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

I knew early on that I wanted to entertain in some form. And I knew I would work as hard as anyone to do it.

I signed up to be a musician, I want to perform, I want to sing.

I try to do the fancy things out there by going with both hands, making crossover moves, and having a certain creativity and flair to my game.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

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

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

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

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

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.