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.

My books are inert as cordwood till a reader's imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.

I have always said to young artists that scholastic training and the studying of art history are crucial to fully developing as an artist.

Whether it's music or acting, that creativity all comes from the same source.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.