As a kid, we would drive up and down 77 North – that’s our highway – there would be office buildings on the side of the highway and I’d be like, that’s what my house is going to look like when I get older. I’m going to start making my house look like this.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

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

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

Hope is not a resting place but a starting point – a cactus, not a cushion.

When I grow up, I want to be like Balvin.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

I don’t know that much about who directs what movies, but I’m definitely inspired by the look of old movies; I find them to be really beautiful.

God has equipped you to handle difficult things. In fact, He has already planted the seeds of discipline and self-control inside you. You just have to water those seeds with His Word to make them grow!

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

I hope my story inspires everyone out there to keep hustling and chasing their dreams.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

All art is but imitation of nature.

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

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

Imagination rules the world.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

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

People want to feel hopeful.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

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

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

I want people to draw strength from me.

No pressure, no diamonds.