My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

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.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

Growing up I’ve watched Lewis and aspired to have some of his attributes, mainly his speed. His raw pace is probably the best of everyone on the whole grid, so there are bits you want from different drivers.

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.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

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

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Children always turn to the light.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Originality is really important.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

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

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

All good art is an indiscretion.