And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

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

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

I grew up in a rural area called Vega Baja and I’m the first of so many talented people in this area to make it out. I take great pride to represent where I come from and I am able to show my fans, and everyone who listens and watches me, that anything is possible.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

Faith Hill is a big role model.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

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.‘

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

We are in a wrong state of mind if we are not in a thankful state of mind.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

Keep a good attitude and do the right thing even when it’s hard. When you do that you are passing the test. And God promises you your marked moments are on their way.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

I don’t like L.A. It’s just not fun. I don’t know why, but I just don’t get it. You have to drive to get everywhere, and when it rains everybody freaks out.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

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

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Whatever role I play is a positive role; it’s a strong role. Never negative.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

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

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.