Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

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.

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.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

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.

When I was making ‚Star Wars,‘ I wasn’t restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‚I’m going to create a world that’s fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.‘

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

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

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

I affirm to you the tremendous potential you have, not beyond anything you could ever imagine.

I like to be creative.

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.

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.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

I hate the idea of genres.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

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

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?