There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

You need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

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

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

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

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.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.

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

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

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

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

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

Music is like film to me.

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

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

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

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

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.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

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.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.