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

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

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

There is spontaneity to my work.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‚I’m possible‘!

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it.

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

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

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

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

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

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

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.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

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

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.