Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

You can stroke people with words.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

There’s not much time to unwind, but you know what, it’s because I love what I do. I look forward to the season. I look forward to playing games. It doesn’t ever feel like work.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

I wanted to write.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

If you’re going to spend two years of your life on something, it has to matter to you; you have to be passionate about it.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

And why not death rather than living torment? To die is to be banish’d from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish’d from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!

Basically, I live to do gigs.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.