Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998, paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

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

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

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

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

My drive is other people’s success.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

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

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

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.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

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‘.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn’t copy my style from anybody.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

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.

What is past is prologue.

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.