They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

I say to the paparazzi, ‚Fellas, take your shot and go.‘ It’s just they usually find me on a beach.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

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

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

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

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

I want to make something that is breathtaking. Of course, you can’t make something that is always breathtaking, or you would never be able to breathe. You would collapse.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Dream in a pragmatic way.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

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

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you’re not alone.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

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.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.

I believe time wounds all heels.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

I’m interested in Jackson Pollock’s kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it’s nothing, and yet it’s incredible.

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

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

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

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

All art is quite useless.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.

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

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

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

A lie cannot live.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

It’s when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that’s the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.