Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.

People want to feel hopeful.

We love things we love what they are.

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.

From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

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 cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I’m a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

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.

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.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world.

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.

Always do whatever’s next.

Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

I like to work.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

You are never too young to learn, never too old to change.

We’re just enthusiastic about what we do.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.