There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

My freshman and sophomore years in high school, I spent a lot of time trying to get back on the right track. I was arrested multiple times by the time I was 16, so I had a little harder time trying to adjust like a lot of us do in high school.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Fear is exciting for me.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

I never fall in love.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

If you’re embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn’t include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Observe all men, thyself most.

People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don’t. I feel that it’s quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well.

I love being busy.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.

Love is a state of being.

I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.