The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

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

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

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

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

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.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

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

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.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

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 always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

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.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

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

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

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

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

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

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

No great thing is created suddenly.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.