I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

Our Heavenly Father loves you. He has created you to be successful and to have joy.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

The Black Mamba collection of watches is me: It is my alter ego, so to speak. As I mentioned before, it is sharp, cutting edge and sleek which are characteristics I try to apply when I’m out there on the basketball court.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

God created man, but I could do better.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

In westerns, you meet a hardy bunch of characters. There is no jealousy on such pictures.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

What was God doing before the divine creation?

When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it’s been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only characters that they can’t stop thinking about.

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don’t notice they’re getting made fun of. So they’ll say something back that’s not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

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

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

To create something you must be something.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

At the heart of every being lies creation’s dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them out of clay.

I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don’t have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don’t adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

When written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

I do write a lot of children’s songs, and I’m going to do a children’s television show, which also means I’ll be doing a lot of albums. So I do hope my future will hold a lot of things for children.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

God’s first creature, which was light.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, ‚convulsions of nature,‘ etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God’s love.