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

I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‚You’re going to do it my way.‘ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‚You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.‘

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

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.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.

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

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

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.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Nothing can come of nothing.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Getting out of bed is like the foundation of the discipline, and I think it carries over into everything else.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

People have to go through trials and tribulations to get where they at. Do your thing – continue to rock it – because obviously, God wants you here.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

All of my writing is God-given.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

A lot of the stuff I do in terms of PR, I learned it from Muhammad Ali.

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

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

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.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Energy begets energy.

I call architecture frozen music.