It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.

I made all my generals out of mud.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

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

No great thing is created suddenly.

Money can’t buy life.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

The last thing you want is to not be recognized for all of the hard work you put in.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

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

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Think off-center.

Never take anything for granted.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

The time to worrying about flying is when you’re on the ground. When you’re up in the air, it’s too late. No point in worrying about it then.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

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 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.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.