The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

I there represent that I sent notice of my method to Mr. Leibnitz before he sent notice of his method to me, and left him to make it appear that he had found his method before the date of my letter.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

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

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

There’s no formula.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

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?

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I’d have a hairy conniption. I’d just go crazy.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

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.

I know that the arts are important. I’m not denying that, but I can’t associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

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.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

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

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

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.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

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.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

I hate the idea of genres.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.