I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

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

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I’m a ham for this stuff.

I’ve always wanted to make a career in the arts, and I think that my only hope at doing that is to make it more about the work.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

I have an immense amount of respect for acting. I’ve always loved movies and was always fascinated by movie-making. But to become an actor, I wanted to commit myself.

There has to be something in every role that interests you.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

It’s in my blood to be around people while I was training.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents‘ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Cosmology is a rapidly advancing field.

Once I get on a puzzle, I can’t get off.

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.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.

I believe nothing happens by mistake. You know, the universe has a divine plan. That sounds dramatic.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

What I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.

It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from?

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

I just was never into performing. It’s just hard work. It’s hard work.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

By staying focused on what I intend to create, by believing that the universe is all-providing, and by knowing that I’m worthy of the unlimited beneficence of the Source of being, I just keep attracting prosperity to me.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

I wanted to write.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.