Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

Playing basketball all my life, I’ve collected a lot of different basketball shoes. It’s pretty much all I wear.

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do.

Writing 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.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I like to work.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

I love food.

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

The people you choose to have around you make all the difference. My family and close friends keep me grounded. You have to have a mind of your own and a strong head on your shoulders. Cricket is the most important thing to me, so the rest of it pales in comparison.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

Aside from singing, I’m also a dancer. I’ve been dancing since I was 8.

In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

We love things we love what they are.

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

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Just like every person who works for Dortmund is a fan of the club, it was the same at Mainz. When I was a player there, we had 800 supporters on rainy Saturday afternoons, and if we died, no one would notice or come to our funeral. But we loved the club, and we have this same feeling at Dortmund.