And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

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

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

Money can’t buy life.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.

The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent.

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.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

You make yourself broad. You make yourself appealing. ‚Hey, y’all, I’m cool with everybody.‘ That’s my message.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.

I don’t have any stress. I’m very lucky. I live a very healthy life.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.