Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.

I’m a big perfectionist! I’m trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.

If you had your life to live over again, do it overseas.

Brad was a huge surprise to me. I think we were both the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom with Mad.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

I can honestly say – and it’s a big surprise to me – that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

The way to know life is to love many things.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

The eagle has no fear of adversity. We need to be like the eagle and have a fearless spirit of a conqueror!

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

I always dreamt of holding the bat and winning games for India. That was my inspiration to take up cricket.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

We can never learn too much of His will towards us, too much of His messages and His advice. The Bible is His word and its study gives at once the foundation for our faith and an inspiration to battle onward in the fight against the tempter.

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.

Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.

My imagination is a twisted place.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

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

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

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.

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.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me… every day, they make me proud… every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

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.

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

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

Life is a song to me.

I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Darth Vader. That’s science fiction; it isn’t going to happen.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

In art the best is good enough.

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.

What is past is prologue.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

Growing up I’ve watched Lewis and aspired to have some of his attributes, mainly his speed. His raw pace is probably the best of everyone on the whole grid, so there are bits you want from different drivers.