I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I’d make one that I can’t get yelled at for.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.

I never played with anything like toys.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

It was the Congress that imposed ‚Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,‘ it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

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.

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.

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

Brad will tell you. He puts a movie on, I’m asleep in 10 minutes. I have no patience. But the kids love action movies with comedy, Jackie Chan and all that.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

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.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

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.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

I like being a writer.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

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

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

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

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.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

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.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.