Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.
Dolly PartonSome people have a difficult time facing truth and reality. They prefer to live in a make-believe world, pretending that certain things aren’t happening.
Joyce MeyerAnd all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
Alexander PopeI design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.
Vivienne WestwoodI affirm to you the tremendous potential you have, not beyond anything you could ever imagine.
Stephen CoveyI knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.
Lana Del ReyReason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
Bertrand RussellThe man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Henry FordCowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.
Ernest HemingwayAs a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.
BonoWith me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
Edgar Allan PoeWriting is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.
Paulo CoelhoI just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.
Dolly PartonA song is anything that can walk by itself.
Bob DylanSometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.
Charles BukowskiPoetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.
Vincent Van GoghImagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis BaconI think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.
Ray BradburyAll the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
Frank ZappaA way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn’t. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist.
Brian EnoFor me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.
Taylor SwiftThere is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI think the idea of art kills creativity.
Douglas AdamsFor 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.
Haruki MurakamiIf I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.
Billie EilishI once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn’t picked me up.
Noam ChomskyCollecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.
Ray BradburyI’m not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.
Margaret AtwoodI can express myself.
Amy WinehouseThe arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.
Kurt VonnegutThe man who has no imagination has no wings.
Muhammad AliStories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.
Haruki MurakamiYou gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.
Frank OceanIn a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.
J. K. RowlingVan Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.
Wayne DyerAt Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.
Alice WalkerI would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
Baruch SpinozaCreativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.
Steve JobsNobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James BaldwinThe last people with any ideas are young people.
Vivienne WestwoodWell, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
Groucho MarxI enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.
Brian EnoPeople may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.
Steven WrightI can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.
Stephen KingThis thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.
Lady GagaAnd poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.
Stephen KingThe atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
George OrwellEducationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamPeople always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.
The WeekndBeing a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.
David BowieIf you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.
Anthony HopkinsI love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.
Matthew McConaugheyThe Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
Henry David ThoreauI wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.
David BowieGo not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.
J. R. R. TolkienI think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘
Terry PratchettHaving unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.
David ByrneI’m a painter in sound.
Brian EnoThe moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
Thomas JeffersonOne of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.
Brian Eno