You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

Sometimes I wish my first word was ‚quote,‘ so that on my death bed, my last words could be ‚end quote.‘

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.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

I try to do the fancy things out there by going with both hands, making crossover moves, and having a certain creativity and flair to my game.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

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

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

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.

I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

I now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.

Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

Contrary to reports, this boy is not a billionaire or going to be richer than any Beatle… and not just in the sense of money, by the way; the Beatles are untouchable – those billionaire reports are a joke.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I wanted to write.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

I’ve just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Politics is applesauce.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

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

I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.