We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure.

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

I am not afraid of saying something and going and pursuing it. That’s it. I see it in my mind. I say it out loud. I go and do it.

I do not live on false promises. I cannot afford to live on bad advice.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.