I always have to be writing.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions – for the fun of it – then one day you’ll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Because of a great love, one is courageous.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

The only way you gain mental toughness is to do things you’re not happy doing. If you continue doing things that you’re satisfied and make you happy, you’re not getting stronger. You’re staying where you’re at. Either you’re getting better, or you’re getting worse. You’re not staying the same.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

I’m always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I’m going to get up in the morning.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

When I do something, I do it full steam ahead.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

I dwell in possibility.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Why do you want to get a good workout early in the morning? Well, because it sends more oxygen to your brain; it releases endorphins. It puts you in a state of mind where you can crush things, which is where you want to be.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

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.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!