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.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

I think how you start the day many times determines what kind of day you’re going to have.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

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.

I hate the idea of genres.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

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.

Britney Spears was an incredible dancer. That kid was amazing.

One of the best mental disciplines for people to implement is simply putting together a schedule or a task list and actually executing it. Write the list or the schedule the night before, and then do what you said you would do. Life becomes much better when you do that.

I always had a sense of discipline in me. However, there was a time when I couldn’t divide my time properly between off-field things and on-field assignments. The focus would be missing at times, and that would affect my preparation for matches. I managed to change that.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

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

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

I grew up in a rural area called Vega Baja and I’m the first of so many talented people in this area to make it out. I take great pride to represent where I come from and I am able to show my fans, and everyone who listens and watches me, that anything is possible.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

Never regret what you don’t write.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

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.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Always do whatever’s next.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.