When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I’m joking and when I’m serious.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

Genius, when young, is divine.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

My imagination is a twisted place.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

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.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

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.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

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

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.