Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

I believe in singing.

I only act from my heart.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.

It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have in life, there’s nothing I need to do other than cricket. If I want to achieve whatever I thought as a kid, I need to work hard and not let it go to waste.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.

My focus is my art, and that’s what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I’ve turned down many things that I just didn’t believe in.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.

I always wanted a great love affair: something that feels big and full, really honest, and enough. No moment should feel slight, false, or a little off. For me, it had to be everything.

I like being a writer.

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.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

The presence of passion within you is the greatest gift you can receive. Treat it as a miracle.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.

I don’t believe you could be a 39-year-old quarterback in the NFL and eat cheeseburgers every day. I want to be able to do what I love to do for a long time.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Just like every person who works for Dortmund is a fan of the club, it was the same at Mainz. When I was a player there, we had 800 supporters on rainy Saturday afternoons, and if we died, no one would notice or come to our funeral. But we loved the club, and we have this same feeling at Dortmund.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It’s not a job, it’s a passion. When you become good at it, it’s a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function – that’s important, and fine, and I support it.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy. Marilyn Monroe, because she was a curvy woman. I’m drawn to things that have the same kind of silhouettes as what she wore because our bodies are similar.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

I was of the generation where most of the Disney princesses and female characters were not girls that I admired. They just weren’t characters I looked up to and identified with.

If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.

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

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

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

Barbra Streisand has accomplished so much, and Dustin Hoffman as well. They are down to earth and approachable. I admire that.