“We can still astonish the gods in humanity And be the stuff of future legends, If we but dare to be real, And have the courage to see That this is the time to dream The best dream of them all.”

Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.

If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.

One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train.

Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.

Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

I’m a realist. And realists don’t fool themselves.

It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing

You can shoot a show and have it not air. It’s not real until it’s airing.

Acting for me was an escape and it wasn’t until Smoke Signals that made me realize that acting is a personal development and challenge to grow.

An echo is a good way to describe the photogram, which is a visual echo of the real object

Anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men’s ignorance of the real an immediate cause.

I take pride in my music, I feel like it actually does something for people personally, in their personal lives, so it’s real music and it helps people get through things like I was able to get through things.

Real results will emerge when we realize the power of combined individual actions and voices to effect change.