I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

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

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

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

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

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.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

You do projects with the hope they will be big and hope they will go beyond what you imagine.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

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.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

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.

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 I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.