My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

People want to feel hopeful.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

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

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

I prefer to praise people and the world rather than criticize them and it.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.

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.

The thing we fear we bring to pass.

The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

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.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

Whatever role I play is a positive role; it’s a strong role. Never negative.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

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.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

As you think, so shall you become.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

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

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

I’m not afraid to make mistakes.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.