I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

I respect Soulja Boy.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

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.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

My imagination is a twisted place.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The people in my songs are all me.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

She’s a total professional, a diva, a mega-star, not just in music but in the entertainment industry. You always learn from the greats, and J.Lo is one.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

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.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

I just want to keep writing music.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.

I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them – they are individual and stylish.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

I’ve had a fan who made a painting of my face with her fingers. I have put it up in my room. It was sweet and very different.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

I just want to be myself.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

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.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

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

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock ‚n roll records to trendy customers.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

Most of my songs have names of people I’ve met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.

My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.