Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.

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.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

I believe in being an innovator.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

You fail only if you stop writing.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I’m joking and when I’m serious.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

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

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.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

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