When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

People say I look so happy – and I say, ‚That’s the Botox.‘

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they’re already asleep.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

I’m just a friendly person; that runs in my family.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

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.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

He who hath many friends hath none.

Prospering just doesn’t have to do with money.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

I only want my work to make people happy.

Music is always a commentary on society.

I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and… I believe in miracles.

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‚I forgive. I’m finished with it.‘

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

If you want to have sustained joy, you have to not only make sure that you think right, but you also have to make decisions now that are going to guarantee some joy in the future.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

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

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish – people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people – and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.