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

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

What we figured out was that in order to get everyone in the world to have basic access to the Internet, that’s a problem that’s probably billions of dollars. Or maybe low tens of billions. With the right innovation, that’s actually within the range of affordability.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.

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

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.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

People will visit Mars, they will settle mars, and we should because it’s cool.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

When I am talking to people who I feel don’t like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

I like to be creative.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

I’m often accused of being ahead of my time, but it’s simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

All art is quite useless.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

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.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

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

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

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

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I’m not like that I never shoot blanks.

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

I’ve tried different things through the years to get some play on mainstream. I’ll try to tailor-make it.

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

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.