I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

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

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

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.‘

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

A lot of my heartbreak songs are inspired by things my sisters are going through, or friends.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

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

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

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‚believe in God‘ and ‚don’t give up‘ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

‚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.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated, I would be a damn fool.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‚title‘ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

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

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

Imagination decides everything.

I’m a big perfectionist! I’m trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life who taught me about quiet strength and dignity.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

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.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

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

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

I’m trying to show everybody that I’m a girl, and I’m five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It’s your world, too!

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Genius, when young, is divine.

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