I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‚Nice doggie‘ until you can find a rock.

Music is really driving my whole life.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

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.

How do people relate to movies now, when they’re on portable devices or streaming them? It’s not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.

I always wanted a great love affair: something that feels big and full, really honest, and enough. No moment should feel slight, false, or a little off. For me, it had to be everything.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

Starting your own business isn’t just a job – it’s a way of life.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

Health consists with temperance alone.

I love tango, and I used to dance when I was young.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

In my heart, I am always a Raider.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

I don’t believe you could be a 39-year-old quarterback in the NFL and eat cheeseburgers every day. I want to be able to do what I love to do for a long time.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

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.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

I only act from my heart.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.

I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword – two jackets, one that’s driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

When it comes down to my brand, We the Best, we’re about the people and whoever is passionate and in love the way I’m in love when it comes down to the headphones I’m promoting.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

I have tennis shoes with little rhinestones that I slip on if I exercise. But I always wear heels, even around the house. I’m such a short little thing, I can’t reach my kitchen cabinets.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

The way to know life is to love many things.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.

Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I love movement. I love moshing.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.