I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Energy begets energy.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

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

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to have certain prerequisites or a crazy life story in order to be successful in this world. But the truth is you really don’t.

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

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

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can’t become athletes. We’re watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

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 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.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

My career as Nipsey Hussle is based on my life as Ermias Asghedom.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

Bhai was my hero and he had immense influence on me.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.