My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them. One day I put a post on Facebook that said, ‚God is not mad at you.‘ Within a few hours, we literally had thousands of positive responses from people saying things like, ‚That is exactly what I needed to hear today.‘ Obviously, this is a message we need to hear.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

While we may lose heart, we never have to lose hope.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.

We have a big appetite for putting people down but, at the heart of everyone, there’s enough room for all of us to succeed.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

Working with J Balvin has undoubtedly been an unparalleled experience.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

I’m the king of the anthems.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

My mother came from India to go to the University of California, Berkeley.

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.

I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.

I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes – my kids, high school kids – get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.

I would love to encourage all my teammates to eat the best way they possibly can. High school athletes. Now, that’s not the way our food system in America is set up. It’s very different. They have a food pyramid, and I disagree with that. I disagree with a lot of things that people tell you to do.

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

What good are fans? You can’t eat applause for breakfast. You can’t sleep with it.

My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

Oh, my mama was awesome. Very strict, overreligious, loved the Lord, loved rules. But she had to be that way because of where we were growing up, the neighborhood I was from.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I’d wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, ‚You’re going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.‘

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another.

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

I decided to sell my drawings. However, I didn’t want people to buy my drawings because the professor of physics isn’t supposed to be able to draw – isn’t that wonderful – so I made up a false name.

God is a great God! I want to encourage you to expect great things from Him.