Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

One thing about ‚Star Wars‘ that I’m really proud of is that it expands the imagination. That’s why I like the ‚Star Wars‘ toys.

I’ve been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It’s natural.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

Some 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.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

But sports carried me away from being in a gang, or being associated with drugs. Sports was my way out.

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

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

I don’t think anything about a personal legacy. I mean, those words would never come out of my mouth unless I just repeated them. Those things have never been important to me.

I can handle pain.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

The artist in me cries out for design.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.