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

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

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

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. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

It takes me about two hours to run into Target. People always want a picture. They hem and haw, and they can’t spit the words out, so they waste about five minutes of my time just standing there getting ready for a picture. Just do it!

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

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.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I’ve been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

‚9 to 5,‘ that little song, that little story, just won’t ever end. Just like ‚I Will Always Love You,‘ it just keeps comin‘ back, popping up its head in one way or another.

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

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

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

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it’s different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He’s very quick.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

My folks always let me go to the movies every Saturday. We were really motion-picture goers.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

In art the best is good enough.

In my day, there were no vet video games.

None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

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.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

Going home helps the content.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

I never listen to ‚Nevermind.‘ I haven’t listened to it since we put it out. That says something.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.