I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

There’s a reason that I have confidence out there, and it’s about how I prepare for games and for series and seasons and whatnot, so we’ve got to stick with that kind of thought process.

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.

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for.

In many ways, September feels like the busiest time of the year: The kids go back to school, work piles up after the summer’s dog days, and Thanksgiving is suddenly upon us.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

I love almost everything about my work except conferences. I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

We record when I have a hole in the schedule. Sometimes night, sometimes afternoon, sometimes morning – we fit it in when we can. I prep for episodes all the time.

In my studio, it is unkempt and unattractive. Once I’m in my work, I don’t notice where I am.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

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

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‚tap-dancing to work.‘

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.

I’ve been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.

Basically it starts with four months of training, just basic stretching, kicking and punching. Then you come to the choreography and getting ready to put the dance together.

There is not enough funding for basic sciences in India. We have to invest in a big way, and I am pushing that idea.

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.

Study men, not historians.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

Life is better when people are working, happy, and spending money.

Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.

You can think of the entire Internet as a place where ideas embodied in cyberspace are having a war, and it’s not much different than the war of gods in heaven, which has been taking place since there’s been human beings.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

It feels good to have your work respected again.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

Be Prepared… the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn’t want them to lose friends. He is his family’s hero.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

For ideas to prevail, many of their defenders have to die in obscurity. Their anonymous influence makes itself felt.

I try to prepare for everything beyond the extent of preparation.

The decision to serve a mission will shape the spiritual destiny of the missionary, his or her spouse, and their posterity for generations to come. A desire to serve is a natural outcome of one’s conversion, worthiness, and preparation.

Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

Where there is no work, there is no dignity.

Actors know, with me they aren’t going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.