I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

I just am committed wholeheartedly to theatre with no intermission.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

I like being a writer.

The joy and love that I get from playing football are unbelievable. It is such a feeling that I want to give everything that I have got. I just enjoy it, I am living a life that I never even dreamt of.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

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

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

Some critics will write ‚Maya Angelou is a natural writer‘ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated.

The writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

I created myself. I have taught myself so much.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I’m not an improv guy. I’m a writer-guy who presents what he’s written.

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‚Runaway‘ music video. Something inside me clicked, like, ‚That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.‘

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

Ever since I was a kid, this was all I wanted to do. I’ve wanted to do music. I wanted to sing. It’s all I know.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

ESPN is a great organization to work for.

I am two with nature.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

Ever since I dated a woman, I know what it is to grab a curve on a woman’s body. Skinny’s not fine when the lights are low.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.