Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

If my edge is dull, my sword is dull, and I don’t want to fight another guy whose sword is dull. If you’ve got two steel swords going back and forth hitting each other, what’s gonna happen? Both of them are going to get sharper. Everybody that’s in the industry has lost their edge.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

I’m sticking to the script, I’m putting that organic feeling back in the game.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

I get impatient with people working on a film that have their head in their hands like it’s the most complicated thing in the world.

It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

I love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

Each generation faces different issues and challenges, but our standard must always be measured by God’s word.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

Each year has been so robust with problems and successes and learning experiences and human experienes that a year is a lifetime at Apple. So this has been ten lifetimes.

Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it’s very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

Many shoulder heavy burdens of righteous responsibility which, on occasion, seem so difficult to bear. I have heard those challenges termed impossible.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

It’s a very confusing era that we’re in.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

It sure is hell to be president.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

All I do is make music.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

Players who are not from the U.K. have to get used to the winds. I have to adapt my style as a result as well. Often, you are forced to keep things simple.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.