Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Rastafari not a culture, it’s a reality.

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

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

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.

All of my music is honest.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

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.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

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.

‚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.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

‚Kiss Land‘ is the story after ‚Trilogy‘; it’s pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it’s very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, ‚Why Japan?‘ I simply tell them it’s the furthest I’ve ever been from home. It really is a different planet.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

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.

In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them.

Chance is an element of life. What I try to do is study what I call the mechanics of reality as carefully as I can.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

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.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

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

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

I think there will be PCs at every price point.

I don’t go down the road of condemning.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

I play a nobody in Japan.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

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

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

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

It’s no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.

I am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.

You cannot make a giant space company in your dorm room. Not today. And the reason is that the heavy lifting infrastructure isn’t in place.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

Well, Apple invented the PC as we know it, and then it invented the graphical user interface as we know it eight years later (with the introduction of the Mac). But then, the company had a decade in which it took a nap.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.