Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

Read the Bible. Work hard and honestly. And don’t complain.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

An unused life is an early death.

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

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

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

I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment – I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I’m on to the next thing. I don’t want to get lost in this big cushion of success.

I am not afraid of saying something and going and pursuing it. That’s it. I see it in my mind. I say it out loud. I go and do it.

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

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Even when you’re 50, you can make the effort to improve your standards.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

Little by little, not by making big promises, I need to be calmer, read more, spend more time with my loved ones, and be more mindful about nature and environment.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Imagination rules the world.

Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.

The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

I’ve learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

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.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

You’ve really got to start hitting the books because it’s no joke out here.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.