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

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.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

My life is my message.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

Music is really driving my whole life.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

We’re all dreamers.

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

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

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

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

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.

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

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine… before she realizes she’s reading.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

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

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.