Lamplighters are the guys who manually turned on all the street lamps in London and turned them off. That was the gig in the 1930s in London.

Everyday has the potential to be the greatest day of your life

I'm past patiently waitin,' I'm passionately smashin' every expectation, every action's an act of creation.

I try to let my decisions be guided not by what I think will succeed or fail, but what I'm going to learn from that process.

When I get called in for stuff for Hollywood, I get to be the best friend of the Caucasian leadIf I want to play the main guy, I have found, I have to write it.

You can't control the success or failure of a thing you work on. You can only control the thing you work on.

The distance between where I am and where I want to be seems impossibly large.

Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.

If you're thinking about the idea in the shower. If you're thinking about the idea while you're walking your dog, there's probably something to it.

I think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time. And that's a great way to make a writer.

I'm not going to hang out with celebrities, I'm not going to parties. I have two songs due for Moana next week, and I'm going to go and spend some time with Maui and Moana in the ocean, in my mind.

What I'm expecting is for you to behave like the gentleman I always thought you were.

When we choose to stay down, we are in reality confusing wisdom with cowardice. When we choose to stand back up, we are using wisdom to overcome cowardice.

Expectations have no effect on the harvest.

The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores - like bandaids had been ripped off to expose the city's skin.

Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.

Your first step towards perfection is acknowledging your imperfections.

...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.

Reason deceives us; conscience, never.

Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?

My first single I was nominated for a Grammy with 'Crank That,' and I lost a Grammy to Kanye West, but it was still such a big deal for me to be nominated anyway.