I was impressed with what someone like Karl Lagerfeld built and did and the house that he made, but there was never really a female figure I wanted to emulate.

Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with. If he had lived and not been purged, I probably would have joined the Muslims.

One man with courage is a majority.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today!

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

Basketball is booming, and it’s not just an Under Armour standpoint: it’s about the game itself. Kids going out and playing and being inspired by what we do on the court.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

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

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.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter – for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

I never dreamt, in my dream, I’m Dalai Lama.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Music can change the world because it can change people.

No pressure, no diamonds.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

I’ve been blessed to be somebody that’s been climbing that success mountain top for years of hard work, you know, but now it’s all connecting. And now, the whole world is watching, you know what I’m saying, and it feels good ‚cause it’s good energy. This is all positive vibes, and good vibes and good energy, so it feels incredible.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

People want to feel hopeful.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: ‚Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?‘

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Where love is, there God is also.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

I always knew that St. Jude was an amazing organization but meeting the kids and seeing how the hospital works first hand was truly beautiful. It doesn’t feel like a regular hospital all dreary and sad. It’s a colorful, beautiful, comfortable, fun place to live and the energy is wonderful.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

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

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.