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

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

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

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

I just want to be a great example to younger kids.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Most of my songs have names of people I’ve met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

I hope that people around the world will be as inspired as I am to step up and to speak out on behalf of girls around the world who struggle to go to school.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

We can never learn too much of His will towards us, too much of His messages and His advice. The Bible is His word and its study gives at once the foundation for our faith and an inspiration to battle onward in the fight against the tempter.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Imagination decides everything.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

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.

I enjoyed working with Stephen Merchant. He was wonderful. I’ve been such a big fan of his acting.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

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

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.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

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 have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

When I went back to my old high school, all these kids looking at me like I’m the real big homie, the same way I look at Jay Z, Nas, or Dr. Dre. You would’ve thought Michael Jackson walked through that joint off the excitement that they had.

As a kid, I used to see how Sachin Tendulkar used to win matches under pressure for India in Sharjah or other places. So I was always keen to repeat the same in similar situations. I don’t take pressure on myself when I am in the middle. I love pressure, and I always believe that pressure makes you more focused.

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.