Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

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.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Rastafari not a culture, it’s a reality.

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

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

You fail only if you stop writing.

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.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

No pressure, no diamonds.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money… they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

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

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

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

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn’t an MP3.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.