This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

When we speak of faith – the faith that can move mountains – we are not speaking of faith in general but of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

I go to cancer wards, and I tell them guys, ‚I’ve beaten it. You can, too.‘

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

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.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

I affirm to you the tremendous potential you have, not beyond anything you could ever imagine.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I was impressed with what someone like Karl Lagerfeld built and did and the house that he made, but there was never really a female figure I wanted to emulate.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it’s possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in this world.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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.‘

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

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.

There’s no formula.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

‚The Lady’s World‘ should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

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

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

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.