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.

I call architecture frozen music.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

Think off-center.

Nothing is so discouraging to an actor than to have to work for long hours upon hours in brightly lighted interior sets.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

I like Cardi B!

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

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

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

All art is quite useless.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

‚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.‘

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

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.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it’s very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

‚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.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

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

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

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.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

I didn’t watch ‚The A-Team‘ movie. I’m an artist. You can’t re-paint a Rembrandt. You can’t duplicate that; I don’t care who you get.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.