Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

I couldn’t ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home. That was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not empty-handed.

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

I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

In art the best is good enough.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.

I’d always tried to resist playing the supervirility thing. I liked showing the vulnerability of age.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

Money does not change people, people change.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

We must use time creatively.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

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

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

I didn’t leave bodybuilding until I felt that I had gone as far as I could go. It will be the same with my film career. When I feel the time is right, I will then consider public service. I feel that the highest honor comes from serving people and your country.

Music is like film to me.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

I’m on the autism spectrum. I don’t usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

We boil at different degrees.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.