Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

I usually don’t like to ‚spoon feed‘ my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

Language is the dress of thought.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‚Runaway‘ music video. Something inside me clicked, like, ‚That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.‘

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

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

I don’t know that much about who directs what movies, but I’m definitely inspired by the look of old movies; I find them to be really beautiful.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Nothing can affect my voice, it’s so bad.

Everybody has a purpose.

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.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

I am the freest author in the world.

Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

All of my writing is God-given.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that’s it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called ‚The Truth‘.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

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

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

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.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine… before she realizes she’s reading.