The arts don’t exist in isolation.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

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.

Every artist wants something different out the game.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

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

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

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

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

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

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

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

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

Coffee is a language in itself.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

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.

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.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

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

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

We should not underestimate ourselves, because if lots of individuals go together then we can accomplish almost anything.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

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

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.