My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.

We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

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

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

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

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places.

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

You are never too young to learn, never too old to change.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

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

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

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!

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

To create something you must be something.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

‚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.‘

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

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

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

I had to get rich so I could sing like I was poor again.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.