The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

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.

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

Growing up I’ve watched Lewis and aspired to have some of his attributes, mainly his speed. His raw pace is probably the best of everyone on the whole grid, so there are bits you want from different drivers.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

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.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

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

Bhai was my hero and he had immense influence on me.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it’s different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He’s very quick.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

I’m a big perfectionist! I’m trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘