I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

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.

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Patience is key for getting over a breakup. That, and trailing off your interaction after the breakup.

You are never too young to learn, never too old to change.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

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

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

While we may lose heart, we never have to lose hope.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

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.

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.

There’s hope for everyone. That’s what makes the world go round.

Children always turn to the light.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

I’m really bad with answering questions. Usually, I don’t even answer them. I try to find inspiration inside of the question. I think, and I jump from one beam of inspiration or energy to the next, as opposed to explaining the energy.

You know, watching Dan Marino and Steve Young get nominated to the Hall of Fame… those guys are unbelievable and they did it for so long. I’d love to play like those guys, but there’s still a long way to go and a lot of growing.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.