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.

There's a wealth of talent that lies in all of us. All of us, including those who work in schools, must nurture creativity systematically and not kill it unwittingly.

I love what Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Jesus all said - that love is really the driving principle of the creative act. In fact, they would say that great art is always inspired by love.

Mos is a true artist who has a story to tell and gives back through his music. He remixed my song 'Different' in 2005, and the song we're working on now will be one of my future projects.

Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.

I would love to be in New York, but it's really hard to be unemployed in New York. Everyone's got a place to be. In L.A., there's a system, a science to being unemployed.