Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.

People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

We're not trying to change the world; just music.

The music industry can make you feel like a prostitute.

Comedy is the blues for people who can?t sing.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide, but being an actor has opened my soul.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside

Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.

Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it.

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.