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

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

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

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

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.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

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

I don’t read ‚chick lit,‘ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill.

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.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

I like being a writer.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

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

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

I would always want printed books.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

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.

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

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.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.