Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

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

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

You fail only if you stop writing.

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.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

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

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics – greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

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

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

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

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

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.

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.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

The wind can be quite extreme in England. We are not familiar with that in Germany, and you have to keep things simple.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

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.

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

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Never regret what you don’t write.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

The real lover is the man who can thrill you just by touching your head or smiling into your eyes – or just by staring into space.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.