Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

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

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

I don’t do meetings.

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.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Time is kind of an amazing thing because you can do so much with it. I think people underestimate time… I don’t want to just sit on my phone for hours.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

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

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

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 have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

‚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.‘

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

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

How I love David Bowie.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

When I finish something, I want it out that day. Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

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.

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.