When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘
Maya AngelouMy lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
Brian EnoSometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.
Joyce MeyerThe last people with any ideas are young people.
Vivienne WestwoodI subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?
David ByrneIt is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William JamesWhen you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.
Wayne DyerDiligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin FranklinI have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.
Elizabeth KennyHe who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
Friedrich NietzscheThough lovers be lost, love shall not.
Dylan ThomasWhat is once well done is done forever.
Henry David ThoreauEnergy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin FranklinI used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.
Billie EilishI worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Groucho MarxWriting is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamIt’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.
Katharine HepburnGenius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Thomas CarlyleEradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.
Bill GatesI don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.
Robert KiyosakiMy experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.
Taylor SwiftThere are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.
David BowieDisneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
Walt DisneyThe job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Francis BaconThe resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test.
George W. BushI don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.
Lady GagaThe song ‚Innocent‘ is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.
Taylor SwiftFrom things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.
Ernest HemingwayIf anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.
Anthony BourdainYou cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
Stephen KingOf course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
Maya AngelouWhen 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.
The WeekndNo one has ever drowned in sweat.
Lou HoltzI think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.
Dwayne JohnsonAnd I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.
Jimmy BuffettIt’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaIn the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheBeautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.
Christopher HitchensVan Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.
Wayne DyerAn unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.
John RuskinSome of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.
Alice MunroLanguage ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
George OrwellWhen we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.
Taylor SwiftI want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.
Frank OceanI write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.
Taylor SwiftIt is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
Douglas AdamsYou don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.
Michelle ObamaHold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Abraham LincolnIf tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?
Bad BunnyI’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.
Taylor SwiftNever let the fear of striking out get in your way.
Babe RuthMere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.
Haruki MurakamiYou either make dust or eat dust.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.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.
Charles BukowskiWhen I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.
Taylor SwiftPersonal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.
Pierre Teilhard de ChardinThe arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.
Vivienne WestwoodI’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.
Lady GagaMusic will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.
Dave GrohlFrustration is a sign I am acting independently. The more you try your own way, the tighter the doors will stay closed.
Joyce Meyer