My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

A home without books is a body without soul.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

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.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

I want a president with a record of public service, someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase fame and fortune for ourselves: we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

Always do whatever’s next.

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

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 are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

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‘.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

When I got depressed, I watched Bruce Lee movies. I learned everything from Bruce Lee.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

All art is but imitation of nature.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

Hope is the magic carpet that transports us from the present moment into the realm of infinite possibilities.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

I want people to draw strength from me.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me… every day, they make me proud… every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

I’m trying to throw a big broad net to try to get people interested in God and believe that He’s for them and has a purpose.

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

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.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Snoop ain’t never cosigned me, but I know everybody is like, ‚That’s the next Snoop.‘ Nah, I’m Nipsey, and I got to work to define myself.

I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

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.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

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

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

The successful men I admired all built their bodies.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.