One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

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

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

I’m thrilled to have Corona join me on my ‚X100PRE‘ Tour to give my fans a taste of Corona Estereo Beach and showcase their support of Latin music. It’s not solely about the music – it’s about the culture, creativity, and contributing to the movement that connects us all together.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

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

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

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.

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

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

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

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.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

I like to be creative.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

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

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

Being politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

I will meet my countrymen. I understand only one language: that they are my countrymen, they are my brothers. You may see with whatever colour you want; Modi will not go into that colour.

I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

Extremely religious, legalistic people have a criticism or judgment about everyone and everything. They just have a way of bringing people down with what they say.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.