Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

When I get down, I don’t waller around for long.

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

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

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.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

I believe the destiny of your generation – and your nation – is a rendezvous with excellence.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‚You Are So Beautiful‘ and Eric Clapton’s ‚Wonderful Tonight‘ – songs that go straight to the point.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

I never dreamt, in my dream, I’m Dalai Lama.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

If you lose a big fight, it will worry you all of your life. It will plague you – until you get your revenge.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

For me, bomber jackets are smart, but they are also street and have a lot of attitude.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

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

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.