I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

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

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting for the elevator – instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I have the space and liberty to create.

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

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.

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.

Every artist was first an amateur.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

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

I’m a painter in sound.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

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

You cannot be creative with people around you.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

We think too much and feel too little.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

I’m not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I’ve always liked the Buddhist religion. When I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‚outside the box,‘ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

I’ve been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It’s natural.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

You have to stay fresh and blank in your mind when you go out to bat. You complicate things, and you’re gone.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

It is important to remember yourself.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

Running started as a way of relaxing. It’s the only time I have to myself. No phones or e-mails or faxes.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I have inhaled, exhaled everything.

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘