It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

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.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

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.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Never regret what you don’t write.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

I’ve only written one science-fiction book: ‚Fahrenheit 451.‘ That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

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.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

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

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

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.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

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.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

I consider myself as a free spokesman for the people.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.