I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

I am a grafter.

In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.

My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

When you tell a recruiter that you’re almost 300 pounds and you want to be a SEAL, it doesn’t go too well. I got hung up on a lot.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

What is once well done is done forever.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

I pity the fool who just gives up.

Philosophy is the highest music.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

I’m a serious aficionada of country music – Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I’ve even written some songs. They haven’t done anything of mine yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I’m trying to pull out of the ground that doesn’t want to come out? I know I’ll win.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later.

To the man who reads ‚Scouting for Boys‘ superficially, there is a disappointing lack of religion in the book. But to him who tries it in practice, the basic religion underlying it soon becomes apparent.

I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

Never, never, never give up.

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

People have to go through trials and tribulations to get where they at. Do your thing – continue to rock it – because obviously, God wants you here.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

There are a lot of inaccuracies out there when it comes to the SEAL training process. You will see guys carrying logs around on television. They think that the hardest part about being on a SEAL team is getting through that training. The fact of the matter is, if you have a good attitude, that training is fun. I had a blast.