Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

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.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

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.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

‚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.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

When you combine boring with fear, you have fun.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

I am not a consecutive writer.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

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.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‚Automobile Magazine.‘ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

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

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

I love tattoos. And mine symbolise who I really am. I have a Samurai on my left arm. At a subconscious level, I connect to this warrior and model myself on his discipline, skills and honour. There is also a tribal tattoo and a Chinese symbol of faith. I have seen a lot of people getting tattoos just because it’s a trend.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

I turned away from bikes when I got a bambino kart for my seventh birthday and started doing some karting, just around some cones at home, but I didn’t think at that point I knew I wanted to go into F1, it was more just for fun.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

I think that success is having fun.