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

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

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.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

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

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

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

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.

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.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

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

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.

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.

I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction – especially autobiographies and biographies. I’ve read ‚Long Walk to Freedom‘ by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I’m totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.

Life is a song to me.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Passions are the gales of life.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.