You can be creative in anything - in math, science, engineering, philosophy - as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.

We live in worlds that we have forged and composed. It's much more true than any of the species that you see. I mean, it seems to me that one of the most distinctive features of human intelligence is the capacity to imagine, to project out of our own immediate circumstances and to bring to mind things that aren't present here and now.

Learning happens in the minds and souls, not in the databases of multiple-choice tests.

What you're doing now, or have done in the past, need not determine what you can do next and in the future.

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.

If anyone can figure out how to balance my celebrity and my dual careers in music and film, it's me. I don't feel frightened; I feel challenged.

There have been plenty of things that I've written that other people haven't cared about, but it hasn't stopped me from being a writer. So, I don't even think about other people. I'm just interested writing about human beings so if somebody calls and says, 'We'd like you to do it,' I'd say, 'That sounds like a cool idea.'

Irish music in the local pubs was my first exposure to musical expression, and I feel like Irish music is very close to musical theater because it is always telling a story.