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

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

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

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies.

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

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.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

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

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.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

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.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

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.

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

I was saving the name of ‚Geisel‘ for the Great American Novel.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

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.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

I don’t know if I officially proofread my father’s book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.