Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

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

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

All art is quite useless.

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

I think that success is having fun.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

In Germany, they all thought I was a bit mental, very emotional.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

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

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

Marriage is the most natural state of man, and… the state in which you will find solid happiness.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

Happiness doesn’t come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Life well spent is long.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

If you like it you should enjoy it! Moderation in everything. If there’s things you really love, you should enjoy. You get one life, so you should enjoy it.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

I’m an emotional person. Sometimes I can’t help it.

When I give somebody something and see their face, it just makes me so happy.

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.

Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with. If he had lived and not been purged, I probably would have joined the Muslims.

Hope is a waking dream.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

I wanted to write.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.