I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

I just have an enthusiasm for life.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

There’s no point in starting a business unless you’re going to make a dramatic difference to other people’s lives. So if you’ve got an idea that’s gonna make a big difference to other people’s lives, then just get on and do it.

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

I hate the idea of genres.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

Young men and women, your education is ever important – to us, to you, and to God.

Quitting is the easiest thing to do.

I feel like this: Whatever is in your path and in your heart, you need to do.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

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.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

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

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.