This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I create stars.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men’s lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

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.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

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.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

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

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

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

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

Latin music is universal.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

I’ve rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

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.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

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.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.