We have art in order not to die of the truth.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

If I weren’t performing, I’d be a beauty editor or a therapist. I love creativity, but I also love to help others. My mother was a hairstylist, and they listen to everyone’s problems – like a beauty therapist!

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.

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

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

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

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

In every walk of life, you must have leaders. An education in the spiritual world, in the labor field, in the agricultural field, we must have leaders.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things – and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.