If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

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

You can stroke people with words.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

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.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

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 have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

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

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

Every artist was first an amateur.

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.

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.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

Every artist wants something different out the game.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

My imagination is a twisted place.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

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

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

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

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become 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 art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.