Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

I was inspired by lots of people, certainly in acting and in writing and stuff, but I never wanted to be somebody else.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

France was very opposite of the show-business experience I'd been living; I was anonymous and alone. I wore no makeup, wore the same clothes every day. And I wrote and wrote and wrote.

By nature, I sit alone in a room and type... My goal was never celebrity.

You've got to live life to write a book about it.

You can be whoever you want to be when you are writing songs.

I say it's easier to write for other people than write for myself.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

May you walk a lighted path. May you fight for truth - your truth, not someone else's - and may you understand, above all things, that you are the most important concept, theory, and philosophy I have ever known.

Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

We are getting older, and we are getting wiser, and we are getting freer. And when you get the wisdom and the truth, then you get the freedom and you get power, and then look out. Look out.

Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

I must be sincere towards what I am. ... Experimenting is the only thing that fills me with enthusiasm. ... It is the only sphere where I feel really honest and sincere.

Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too.

Truth is not the enemy and whatever does not kill us, sets us free.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.

Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.

It was only until I started to be myself that the music started to flow and people started to listen. So, thank you guys...

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and that we shouldn't worry about what we're not but to try to focus on what we are and what we do know.