Quotes About Inspiration

I never knew the word 'billion' when I was a kid.

No one wants to hear me doing my best Garrison Keillor... I think that he's inimitable; he's one in a billion.

People asked, 'So what are you - a multimillionaire?' I like to say, 'A billionaire wanna-be.'

There are so many of us that just do things to pay bills, but I never wanted that to be me.

I can tell you the actor who I admire the most. Billy Crudup. Do you know who he is? He's awesome.

I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?'

I think 'Billy on the Street' is a big show, but why do a show if you won't make it original and unique and powerful?

Billy Gunn, Bill DeMott, and Dusty Rhodes all helped me find myself and how to express it to people so they understand.

Watching Billy Connolly at the Hammersmith Apollo in the late 90s was a masterclass of long-form comedy.

I feel art has the power to bind us.

I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.

I think of the Bible as an unauthorized biography.

More and more I'm finding that I'm reading history, I'm reading biography, I'm reading autobiography for a sense of people who've been able to provide leadership. I don't read leadership books anymore.

The best thing you can do when you're not feeling funny is go out and get more stimuli from the world, get out and walk around, read a book, go talk to some birds or a dog and replenish the well, as it were.

The older I get, the more I think birds are the best musicians on the planet.

There weren't any astronauts until I was about 10. Yuri Gagarin went into space right around my 10th birthday.

I was concerned about being 40 and for my 40th birthday my wish was to go see Cher, and I got to meet her.

Learning music is a birthright. And you have to start young.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

All my main characters have got bits of me, bits of my family, bits of my friends.

I used to have these reoccurring dreams that I played guitar, which I thought was so bizarre. It all sort of fit together at some point, and I said 'I want to play guitar.'

Do you have any idea what Ali meant to black people? He was the leader of a nation, the leader of Black America. As a young black, at times I was ashamed of my color; I was ashamed of my hair. And Ali made me proud.

I don't like to do press. But I know sometimes I need to do it because every time I do there's young people - black and white, but I think about young African-Americans because that's the experience I grew up with - who hear it.

That's because we did not set out to make black music. We set out to make quality music that everyone could enjoy and listen to.