Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

I’ll never make it, it will never happen, because they’re never going to hear me ‚cause they’re screaming all the time.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.

When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‚I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,‘ and so forth, I switch off quite early.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

I don’t have faith in young people any more. I don’t waste time trying to communicate with them.

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

When your mother asks, ‚Do you want a piece of advice?‘ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

I don’t like talking to celebrities.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

I think some of my colleagues‘ spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

When the players go home, I can’t tell them what to do, so you need to create an atmosphere of trust. I don’t want to think, ‚What are they doing now? Do I need to call them?‘

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.