I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?

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

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

I could hardly sit through ‚Frozen.‘ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Music is really driving my whole life.

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.

Acting is happy agony.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

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

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

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

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Nothing can come of nothing.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

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

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

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

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

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

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.

My career as Nipsey Hussle is based on my life as Ermias Asghedom.

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.

Scripture is filled with examples of men and women whom God used late in life, often with great impact – men and women who refused to use old age as an excuse to ignore what God wanted them to do.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

My drive is other people’s success.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.