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.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

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.

I like being a writer.

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

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

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.

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.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

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.

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.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

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

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

We’ve gotta reinvest in space travel. We should’ve never left the moon.

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

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

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.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

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

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.