You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

You’ll see it when you believe it.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

We must use time creatively.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

I actually don’t want a throne at all, because I don’t view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

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

There is spontaneity to my work.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.

Our intention creates our reality.

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

If you don’t set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

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

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

I have the ’77 Million Paintings‘ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‚God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!‘ And that’s a real thrill.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.