I never listened to any noise around me. I listened only to my gut feeling and did what I should have

That is a lesson I try to take to real life. What is the real problem? Don’t just dive in and start trying to go with your first instinct. Step back and say, ‘What am I really trying to accomplish here?’

Intuition? They say intuition is sort of feeling and intellect going at the same time. It’s a knowingness. As I always say, it’s knowing when something isn’t quite correct and then knowing a way to make it correct. And intuition is, I always say, the number one tool for the artist, I think the number one tool for people in business, perhaps the number one tool for human beings. Knowing how to do something, how to make it feel correct for you.

No. You don't have to have rules. If you have rules—you know in cinema you have to be very pragmatic.

Whatever scares you, go do it.

Sometimes you don't even need your friend to say yay or nay, you just have to hear yourself expressing it out loud to another person that's never heard it before. And I particularly like doing the out loud bit. I like my sentences to sound good.

The first version of my How to Live book was 1300 pages. It took a couple of years to write and it was 1300 pages, and then it took a couple of years to edit it down to 115 pages. Most of my writing process is editing.

The worst advice was to start a record label when I wanted to be a musician. It was smart advice. It could have made me more money, but it did not inspire me.

I have no team business-wise. I should mention that I have no assistant or team at all.

I love days where I just work uninterrupted from 6am to 10pm, stopping just for a little exercise. These are my favorite days, and always have been.