Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

My name can’t be that tough to pronounce!

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

When written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

The amount of trust and bandwidth that you build up working with someone for five, seven, 10 years? It’s just awesome. I care about openness and connectedness in a global sense.

I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don’t think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

We came up with TDE. As competitive as rap is, and as much as we’re trying to exceed the standards we set for ourselves, we take their wins as our wins, too.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

All art is but imitation of nature.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Football is a team game and none can survive or excel without the help of the other.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I think we understand that for the Court to work well, we have to not only respect but genuinely like each other.

I’m a pretty funny guy, and I would love to do a comedy with a bunch of funny guys – movie-star guys, where they could help me through it.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

I create stars.

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.

I first met Bev Shea while in Chicago when he was on Moody Radio. As a young man starting my ministry, I asked Bev if he would join me. He said yes, and for over 60 years we had the privilege of ministering together across the country and around the world.

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.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

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

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

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

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Black men don’t like to be called ‚boys,‘ but women accept being called ‚girls.‘

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

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

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 few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.