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

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others‘ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

When you think of the exponential speed and scale of expansion of social media or a service, you have to believe that it is equally possible to rapidly transform the lives of those who have long stood on the margins of hope.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

I don’t know who I would have been if I never watched MotoGP.

To excel at the highest level – or any level, really – you need to believe in yourself, and hands down, one of the biggest contributors to my self-confidence has been private coaching.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

My superhero has always been Tendulkar, and it will be Tendulkar for life. He is someone who has inspired me immensely. Just watching him play for India, I used to dream of winning games for India, because he used to do it single handedly.

Big results require big ambitions.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

A Khaled record is always the best.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

I don’t want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

A chorus is not easy.

I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion – and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

Example is leadership.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.