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.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

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

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

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

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

I didn’t get trained by the school system like other kids, and when I did concentrate on learning, my mind was cluttered and locked by the programming of the system.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

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

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

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.

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

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

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.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

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

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

I think we’re doing a dreadful job of educating.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.