My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

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.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.

There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

All I have to say is basically if performing, singing, acting, and dancing is what you want to do, then you just have to do it – no matter where it is.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

I really love training and being in good shape, and it’s so much a part of my life now, so it never really feels like work to me.

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

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

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.

Oh yes, I love to do shoes. I’m not a fetishist but I love to do shoes.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

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

With action films, it’s great if it’s not just driven by action, but by a good story and interesting characters, as well. Though, there’s nothin‘ like kicking butt!

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

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.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

I like being a writer.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

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

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

We love things we love what they are.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.