I credit my mom with inspiring in me a love of design, matched by her creative problem-solving abilities. This is a woman who could find an old, discarded piece of furniture, bring it home and turn it into something fabulous.

Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

For your own self-respect and sanity, your creative freedom, you have to be careful that you don't rely too much on other people's opinions of what you do because it can stunt and inhibit you.

All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.

Reading has been the fuel of my motivation: it has changed the direction in which I have traveled, and it has enhanced my creative imagination more than any other activity I have ever pursued.

My dad is a lawyer and my mom is an artist. So growing up was exactly what it sounds like - strict household but a lot of creativity. They are so psyched that I get to make music for a living. My parents rule.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I've always felt about that decision - it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting mirrors that fame engenders.

For me, it's always been one of my pet peeves to keep people engaged and talking, and just always being interested in what I have going on. To keep the level of creativity always turned up to the max.

I think it is the weak and the young and the minorities that you need to look after to get a healthy creative environment - to get a lot of choices, a lot of different styles of music, a lot experimental stuff that everyone else feeds off.

The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.”   TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO