I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Where love is, there God is also.

Passions are the gales of life.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Bill Gates has always been a mentor and inspiration for me even before I knew him. Just growing up, I admired how Microsoft was mission-focused.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

You cannot be creative with people around you.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

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

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

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

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

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

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

I believe that one person can make a difference.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

I would always want printed books.

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

Exploration by real people inspires us.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

I want to be like Bruce Springsteen or something, making songs that are relevant.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Growing up I’ve watched Lewis and aspired to have some of his attributes, mainly his speed. His raw pace is probably the best of everyone on the whole grid, so there are bits you want from different drivers.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

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.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

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.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.