You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

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.

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.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Small aim is a crime; have great aim.

Attitude and enthusiasm play a big part in my life. I get excited about the things that inspire me. I also believe in laughing and having a good time.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

As a kid, I used to see how Sachin Tendulkar used to win matches under pressure for India in Sharjah or other places. So I was always keen to repeat the same in similar situations. I don’t take pressure on myself when I am in the middle. I love pressure, and I always believe that pressure makes you more focused.

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

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

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

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

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

I draw from the crowd a lot.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‚Runaway‘ music video. Something inside me clicked, like, ‚That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.‘

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me… every day, they make me proud… every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

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.

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

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.