The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

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

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Music is like film to me.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

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.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

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

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

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

The law is reason, free from passion.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

When I’m really interested in something, I get superfocused on that. And I can spend hours upon hours not getting tired of reading about it and still be interested to learn more about it.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

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.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

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

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.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

We love things we love what they are.

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

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

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

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

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.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.