I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Don’t worry about motivation. Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes. It is unreliable – and when you are counting on motivation to get your goals accomplished, you will likely fall short.

Language is the dress of thought.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

If a man can… make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Think off-center.

‚Your Erroneous Zones’ was the book that went over the top simply because I believed in it so much.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

Great acts are made up of small deeds.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

I try to do the fancy things out there by going with both hands, making crossover moves, and having a certain creativity and flair to my game.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

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.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

I remember flying in, driving down 101 in a cab, and passing by all these tech companies like Yahoo! I remember thinking, ‚Maybe someday we’ll build a company. This probably isn’t it, but one day we will.‘

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

If you want special results, you have to feel special things and do special things together. You can speak about spirit, or you can live it.

I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

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

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.