You cannot be creative with people around you.

People want to feel hopeful.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

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.

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

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.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction – especially autobiographies and biographies. I’ve read ‚Long Walk to Freedom‘ by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I’m totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

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.

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

This is Sunday, and the question arises, what’ll I start tomorrow?

I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

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.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.