Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

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.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

I just want to go through Central Park and watch folks passing by. Spend the whole day watching people. I miss that.

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

Old is authentic. Old is genuine. Old is valuable.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

I am a fan of the ‚Rocky‘ films, and ‚Rocky 4‘ is my favourite. I also like ‚The Warriors.‘

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

It feels kinda weird being back in a high school cause I haven’t been in a high school for about a year. So um, it’s kinda interesting coming back, and y’know seeing the lockers, with all the signs, the handmade signs, so being in high school again is a little bit strange but in a good way.

I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‚The King’s Speech‘ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

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.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

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.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused – in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened – by the recurrence of Christmas.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

One of the great pleasures of going to see a Daniel Day-Lewis film: you haven’t seen him in five years. Where have you been? So, it’s a special event, right? Well, if you want to go see a movie that I’m in, it still may be a special event for you, but, you don’t feel like you don’t know where I’ve been.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

I hate the idea of genres.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Black-and-white always looks modern, whatever that word means.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

Every time I come to Europe, I’m just as excited as I was my very first time, which was many, many years ago. I love that part of the world, and I especially love the fans.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

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