My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

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.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

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

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

All of my writing is God-given.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn’t have to go so fast.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

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

By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

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

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

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

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

Young people can create beautiful things.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

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.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

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.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.