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.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

The way to know life is to love many things.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

All of my music is honest.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

Think off-center.

There is spontaneity to my work.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

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

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

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.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‚You’re going to do it my way.‘ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‚You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.‘

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

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

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

Preparation for a mission is important. A mission is a voluntary act of service to God and humankind. Missionaries support that privilege with their personal savings. Parents, families, friends, and donors to the General Missionary Fund may also assist.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.