When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

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.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

I’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

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

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

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.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

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.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

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.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You’re grateful for these different chances.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

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

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

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

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

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!