I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

We’re all dreamers.

Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can’t help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won’t want to worry.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

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.

Cast away your sloth, your lethargy, your coldness, or whatever interferes with your chaste and pure love for Christ, your soul’s husband. Make Him the source, the center, and the circumference of all your soul’s range of delight.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

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

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

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

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

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.

Anyone can be a Superman, but nobody can be Jackie Chan.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

I think New York has evolved in my work just the way the city has.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can’t become athletes. We’re watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.

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

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.