Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

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.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

There’s so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it’s reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She’s been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

The bravest person I’ve ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for a very rare, complex and unpleasant disease. I last saw him at a Discworld convention, where he chose to take part in a game as an assassin. He died not long afterwards, and I wish I had his fortitude and sense of style.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

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

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.