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.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

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.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

The successful men I admired all built their bodies.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

The secret to humor is surprise.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

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

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.

You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night – and I’d dream about it being me.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

My imagination is a twisted place.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.

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

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

I used to always sit in church looking out the windows at the boys, wondering if I could make an excuse to go out and, you know, go to the bathroom because all the outdoor toilets. But anyhow, I was only going out to see the boys.

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

I had to get rich so I could sing like I was poor again.

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.