I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

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.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

People have so much going on in their heads. I’m like, If you could write a song, you’d feel so much better!

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

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.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

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.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

The greatest service that can be offered to children who show personality traits or inclinations that might not be understood by the adults around them is to allow them to express their own unique humanity.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Frank Lloyd Wright… his things were beautiful but not very functional.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

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.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

A yawn is a silent shout.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

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

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Some critics will write ‚Maya Angelou is a natural writer‘ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.