On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

It is natural to die as to be born.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

Music is in my DNA!

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

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

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

I enjoyed climbing with other people, good friends, but I did quite a lot of solo climbing, too.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

If you are the kind of person who is waiting for the ‚right‘ thing to happen, you might wait for a long time. It’s like waiting for all the traffic lights to be green for five miles before starting the trip.

What we live by we die by.

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery – always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What’s this passion for?

I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion – and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

Passion is needed for any great work, and for the revolution, passion and audacity are required in big doses.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.