If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‚outside the box,‘ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

Americans never quit.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.

When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I have my flaws too, but I am a professional who doesn’t like to miss or lose.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

I focus on one thing and one thing only – that’s trying to win as many championships as I can.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.

When I get on a roll with something, it’s really hard for me to put it down unfinished.

I know what it feels like to struggle to get the education that you need.

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

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

I’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

You have to be tough and have a lot of faith.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.