Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

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

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

Young people can create beautiful things.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

I hate the idea of genres.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

It’s not about charisma and personality, it’s about results and products and those very bedrock things that are why people at Apple and outside of Apple are getting more excited about the company and what Apple stands for and what its potential is to contribute to the industry.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

I’m not the most patient of people.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.

Ours is a nation of laws: of citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them. So, to a community in Ferguson that is rightly hurting and looking for answers, let me call once again for us to seek some understanding rather than simply holler at each other. Let’s seek to heal rather than to wound each other.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

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.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

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

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do 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.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

One thing you gotta know about me is I have absolutely no filter. I have no problem saying what the hell I think of someone.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‚outside the box,‘ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

My wife and I don’t compete. We know each other’s preferences, and we work to provide those for each other. One will take over when the other is faced with something he or she dislikes. That’s what friends do.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

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.

Men and women do think differently, and frankly, we don’t understand each other. Not at all! But that’s what makes relationships so amazing.

A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

I’m a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don’t like multitasking. When I’m doing one thing, I like to do just that thing.