“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing.”

Creativity is a continual surprise.

You can make yourself happy or miserable – it’s the same amount of effort.

If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both-you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

You fail only if you stop writing.

You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

There’s no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.

It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.

I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it’s immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.

I don’t believe in government. I hate politics. I’m against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.

There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

You’ve been put on the world to love the act of being alive.

The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can’t change. After I die, I’ll probably come back as a paintbrush.

I would suggest that the next generation stop looking for happiness outside of themselves but instead turn inward.

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.

What makes me most happy is connecting with others. I love meeting new people, being social, and engaging in empowering discussions.

The more you retrain yourself to choose happiness over fear, the more blissful you will be.

Happiness is your choice. You can choose today.

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness — or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.

I have enjoyed the happiness of the world; I have loved.