I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

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.

The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

I want a president with a record of public service, someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase fame and fortune for ourselves: we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I’d follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I’ve been very lucky.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

I’m a pretty funny guy, and I would love to do a comedy with a bunch of funny guys – movie-star guys, where they could help me through it.

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.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

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

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

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.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

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.

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

Art is the proper task of life.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.