I think the idea of art kills creativity.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

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.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

Life is a song to me.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

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 conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

No one but a fool is always right.

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 cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

I sent out a tweet, ‚Dancing with the Stars‘ should stop the jibber jabber. They shouldn’t make the departure of a dancer so tear jerky because nobody’s going to war.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.