Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Death is the king of this world: ‚Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

When we speak of faith – the faith that can move mountains – we are not speaking of faith in general but of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

Silence is safer than speech.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

I’m a painter in sound.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

The honor of a nation is its life.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

Creative output, you know, is just pain. I’m going to be cliche for a minute and say that great art comes from pain.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

I got a signed document from Bullock’s saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignment. Of course, nobody bought any of them, but otherwise, I was a big success: I had my drawings on sale at Bullock’s!

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

No great thing is created suddenly.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.