I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he’s terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he’s a terrific actor.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

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.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

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

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

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.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I love food.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

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.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

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.

After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

The day I think I’m not enjoying the game and contributing the way I would like to, I’ll hang up my boots.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

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

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

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

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

I try to do the fancy things out there by going with both hands, making crossover moves, and having a certain creativity and flair to my game.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.