Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

I call architecture frozen music.

Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

You’ll see more and more perfection of that – computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as a guide or agent.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

Science is magic that works.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

Even more amazing than modern technology is our opportunity to access information directly from Heaven, without hardware, software, or monthly service fees.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. 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.

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

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can’t get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch. It’s an incredibly tedious process.

‚Jolene‘ has been very popular all of these years, even overseas.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

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.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

Imagination decides everything.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

And you know, I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.