You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

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

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

All of my music is honest.

I don’t want to hear the word ‚can’t.‘

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

People want to feel hopeful.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

You might not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

I didn’t get trained by the school system like other kids, and when I did concentrate on learning, my mind was cluttered and locked by the programming of the system.

I’ve learned never to say never.

People who pity themselves think, ‚Why would I try to do anything? I’ll just fail.‘

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

Highly functioning self-actualized people simply never imagine what it is that they don’t wish to have as their reality.

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

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.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Getting rich is about fun. It’s a game, and you have to treat it that way.

I’m an inventor.

When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice. Growing older with grace is possible for all who will set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

Our intention creates our reality.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

What you are comes to you.