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.

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

The Bible says to ‚fear not,‘ but this doesn’t mean you should never feel scared. It means when you do feel fear, keep going forward and do what you are supposed to do. Or as I like to say, do it afraid.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

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.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

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

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

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

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

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.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

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

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

I hope my story inspires everyone out there to keep hustling and chasing their dreams.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

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.

It’s the way I study – to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

We’re all dreamers.

Because of a great love, one is courageous.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

I go to cancer wards, and I tell them guys, ‚I’ve beaten it. You can, too.‘

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‚Hitchhiker’s,‘ and I thought, ‚No, no.‘ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

Every artist was first an amateur.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

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.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.