‚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.‘

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

I like it when someone tells me ‚I don’t agree.‘ This is a true collaborator. When they say ‚Oh, how great, how great, how great,‘ that’s not useful.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I try to do the fancy things out there by going with both hands, making crossover moves, and having a certain creativity and flair to my game.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

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

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

I remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

Dr. Karel Culik is an outstanding applied mathematician, a specialist in algebra, logic, computer sciences and mathematical linguistics. In 1965, he visited the linguistics research program at MIT, and we have worked together on several projects since.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

No, I can’t do rap music!

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, auditioning for Broadway was my dream.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

The way to know life is to love many things.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

A chorus is not easy.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

All of my writing is God-given.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

I’m a painter in sound.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.