Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

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.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

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

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.

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

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

I like being a writer.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

Originality is really important.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

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.

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others‘ negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

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.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I’ve thought sometimes about what I like about football, and it’s playing together.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

I rely on other people every day of my life.

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.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

In the same way the sun never grows weary of shining, nor a stream of flowing, it is God’s nature to keep His promises. Therefore, go immediately to His throne and say, ‚Do as You promised.‘

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

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.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

My evidence that I am saved does not lie in the fact that I preach, or that I do this or that. All my hope lies in this: that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. I am a sinner, I trust Him, then He came to save me, and I am saved.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

I hate the idea of genres.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

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.

The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.