Akon Quotes

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

It was like there was a pile of kindling that was in the back of my imagination just waiting there. Once I lit it, it just flared up and I kept getting ideas and ideas.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I'll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.

Not all ideas are like a twinkling star in the sky, and you get inspired to make a record the next day.

The toughest question has always been, "How do you get your ideas?" How do you answer that? It's like asking runners how they run, or singers how they sing. They just do it!

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

It's cool to have instruments lying around because they give you different ideas.

My inspiration is endless; I can't define it. It is a constant flow and evolution. In general, I'm taking it from everywhere. People get nervous when they walk with me, as I'll see something and suddenly have to text it to myself.

Look around at day-to-day life for ideas, and it finds its way into your work.

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

You don't actually have ideas; ideas have you.

Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another. But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

I get a lot of my songwriting done while driving around Nashville - sometimes it comes to me that way.

Many people say some of their best ideas come from dreams. Arguably the greatest Beatles song, 'Yesterday,' came to Paul McCartney in a dream.

The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.

As much as I love performing, nothing juices me up creatively like being in my own studio for an extended period. Songs, ideas, even paintings are pouring out of me. My inspiration and usual subject matter: life.

I've never been able to develop a movie over several years, and keep coming back to it and adding to it. I get excited by the spark of an idea, and if I can't go make that, there's another idea that comes along that I get excited about. It has to happen quickly, in order for it to happen, at all.

Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.

The magic happens in the creative studios. But sometimes you're inspired when you're removed from it a little bit. That's when the juice starts to percolate.

Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance...I'm going like a painting-locomotive.