I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

Prince Charles is definitely my hero; he uses his position to do only good in this world.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

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.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That’s still what I am doing. The end.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

No pressure, no diamonds.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

To create something you must be something.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it’s never at the expense of the other guy.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

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.‘

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

I look just like the girls next door… if you happen to live next door to an amusement park.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

Children always turn to the light.

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

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.