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.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

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.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

The ‚Maddox Jolie-Pitt‘ Foundation’s work is inspired by our children and their connections to particular countries.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today!

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

The sun is gone, but I have a light.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

Everybody has a purpose.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‚believe in God‘ and ‚don’t give up‘ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

Never regret what you don’t write.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.