In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

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.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

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

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

One element of Madonna’s career that really takes center stage is how many times she’s reinvented herself. It’s easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It’s inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

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.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn’t happen, but other planets.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

I always thought about working in England because of the kind of football, the intensity of football. Liverpool was first choice.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.

The day I think I’m not enjoying the game and contributing the way I would like to, I’ll hang up my boots.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish – people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people – and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.

Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate – not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.