Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

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

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

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

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.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

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

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

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

As a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

My shows are not narratives.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

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

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

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

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

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

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?