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.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‚outside the box,‘ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

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 difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

I am the freest author in the world.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

That’s all I could ever hope for, to have a positive effect on women. ‚Cos women are powerful, powerful beings. But they’re also the most doubtful beings. They’ll never know – we’ll never know – how powerful we are.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

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

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

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

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.