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.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

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

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

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

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

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.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

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

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Originality is really important.

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

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

I wanted to only create a great perfume, not any perfume that would sell, but a great artistic one that the fans would not feel cheated by.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

I’ve never had writer’s block.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

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

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I’m very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I’m feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It’s gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.