In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.

America is the greatest country in the world.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

America is just downright mean.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

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

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

All of my writing is God-given.

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

After a century of trying, we declared that healthcare in America is not a privilege for a few, it is a right for everybody. After decades of talk, we finally began to wean ourselves off foreign oil. We doubled our production of clean energy. We brought more of our troops home to their families, and we delivered justice to Osama bin Laden.

From 1945 to 1974, the Western world – including America – was more socialistic than capitalistic, more pro-labor than pro-business.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

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.

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don’t forget it.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I have dual citizenship, it just so happens I live in America.

A diplomatic solution that puts significant and verifiable constraints on Iran’s nuclear program represents the best and most sustainable chance to ensure that America, Israel, the entire Middle East will never be menaced by a nuclear-armed Iran.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

You do projects with the hope they will be big and hope they will go beyond what you imagine.

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.

Playing big, heroic characters with heart is always a lot of fun. I enjoy making movies like that, and a lot of people love to live vicariously through those characters.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

One day, I want to make a PG film.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.