Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

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.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

What nourishes me also destroys me.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

Genius, when young, is divine.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The song ‚Innocent‘ is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

Sometimes, I feel like one who is on the sidelines, who has missed life itself.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don’t know who or what, maybe myself.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

All of my music is honest.

I wake up in the morning and my heart is light, man. It’s not heavy. I don’t have skeletons in the closet on their way out.

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.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.