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

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

An artist or a creative person of any kind goes about their work because it’s their path, it’s what excites them, it’s what aligns their soul with who they truly are, who they showed up to be.

Imagination rules the world.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

It’s hard knowing who to trust with your personal life. When you cry in your room at night, you don’t always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

I love being in a courtroom.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

I go to cancer wards, and I tell them guys, ‚I’ve beaten it. You can, too.‘

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Young people can create beautiful things.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

There is something about building up a comradeship – that I still believe is the greatest of all feats – and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation.

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

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

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

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.