Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

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.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

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.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

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.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

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.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

I love being in a courtroom.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

When I’m really interested in something, I get superfocused on that. And I can spend hours upon hours not getting tired of reading about it and still be interested to learn more about it.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

I didn’t know the term ‚synesthesia‘ until I was working on ‚Cruel Summer.‘ Halfway into writing that, I really understood that, my entire life, I had been trying to describe this condition of mine: through painting, through this seven-screen Surround Vision film we shot in Qatar, through all these things.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

FaceTime helps me a lot. I feel like I’m at home even though I’m not.

The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.