Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

We live in a time-crunched world, and just about everything we do seems to be urgent.

I don’t think about that. I wasn’t a kid growing up saying one day I’ll get an Oscar and make a speech. That wasn’t on my mind. So what I do is the best work I can do.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

O, had I but followed the arts!

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

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‚outside the box,‘ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

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

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

I don’t think I’ve met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, ‚Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,‘ and that is true. Everything I’ve accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

I can’t stand directors who try to micro-manage everything. When it happens these days I just walk off set, saying if they don’t like the way I’m doing it they can get someone else.

Time is kind of an amazing thing because you can do so much with it. I think people underestimate time… I don’t want to just sit on my phone for hours.

I often work by avoidance.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

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

A reputation as a hard worker is a good reputation to have.

In art the best is good enough.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

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.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

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

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Whatever work you do, you think are you doing this for the good of the nation? That’s the basic training. The other basic training is discipline. Your life should be disciplined. The other thing they say is what work you get, do it well.

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.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

My imagination is a twisted place.

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

Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.