Originality is really important.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator… these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

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.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

I have no private interest in the reception of my inventions by the world, having never made, nor proposed to make, the least profit by any of them.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.

I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

I’m a painter in sound.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Apple took the edge off the word ‚computer.‘

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

What I’m trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

The potential financial reward for building the ‚next Windows‘ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.

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

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

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

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.