You cannot be creative with people around you.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

I can’t usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it’s new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it’s about function.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

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

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

I wanted to write.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

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 atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

You fail only if you stop writing.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

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.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Imagination rules the world.

What keeps me motivated is love and passion.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

Cast away your sloth, your lethargy, your coldness, or whatever interferes with your chaste and pure love for Christ, your soul’s husband. Make Him the source, the center, and the circumference of all your soul’s range of delight.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

In my studio, it is unkempt and unattractive. Once I’m in my work, I don’t notice where I am.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

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

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

I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night – and I’d dream about it being me.

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‚I’m possible‘!

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.