You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

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

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.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

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

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Sucking up to the biggies won’t get us anywhere.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.

One man with courage is a majority.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

If I love you, I show you I love you every day. Little things, big things.

I always wanted to be loved.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

A woman can’t be alone. She needs a man. A man and a woman support and strengthen each other. She just can’t do it by herself.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

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

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

All I ever wanted to do with my life was own a little house. I did that way back with ‚Rocky,‘ so now everything I do is just icing on the cake.

For me, when I picture the person I want to end up with, I don’t think about what their career is, or what they look like. I picture the feeling I get when I’m with them.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.