Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

As you know, low demand and high supply means a drop in value of anything, including the dollar.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

I like being a writer.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

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.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

I go to cancer wards, and I tell them guys, ‚I’ve beaten it. You can, too.‘

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

I don’t like begging money from producers.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

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.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with. In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

I always have to be writing.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.