With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

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

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I made all my generals out of mud.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

Music is in my DNA!

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.

In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.

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.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

I always thought about working in England because of the kind of football, the intensity of football. Liverpool was first choice.

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

It’s so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I’ve never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

The intensity of the football and how the people live football in Liverpool – it is not a usual.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

I just am committed wholeheartedly to theatre with no intermission.

I love to take, process and share photos – it fills me up.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

It’s true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

What keeps me motivated is love and passion.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.