I started working in the oilfield upon graduating high school. I was on the service end of it, driving tank trucks for Johnny Geer for a couple years and learning about oil and gas production. I had a whole cadre of mentors.

No matter what, you've got to always follow your passion in life and always keep learning.

The demons you have are what motivate you to make your art. This is what drives the detective, this is what drives the painter, this is what drives the writer: a conflicting urge to forget pain and at the same time remember it and fight for some kind of justice. I know these powerful things are inside of me and everyone in some way or another.

Napoleon - the people who were becoming Napoleon's generals realized that for him, it was not about spreading freedom and revolution; it was about creating a new empire with Napoleon the dictator or the emperor.

By comparison, 'The Secret Agent' is not especially prescient about terrorism, certainly not technically. The Professor was a stock figure of Edwardian fiction, and his dreams of mass destruction were nothing ahead of their time. Many novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries involved plots far more deadly.

Alex Dumas was a consummate warrior and a man of great conviction and moral courage. He was renowned for his strength, his swordsmanship, his bravery, and his knack for pulling victory out of the toughest situations. But he was known, too, for his profane back talk and his problems with authority.

Today, the world is so awash in sugar - it is such a staple of the modern diet, associated with all that is cheap and unhealthy - that it's hard to believe things were once exactly the opposite. The West Indies were colonized in a world where sugar was seen as a scarce, luxurious, and profoundly health-giving substance.

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.

My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.

Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.

Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer.

The relationship between the public and the artist is complex and difficult to explain. There is a fine line between using this critical energy creatively and pandering to it.

When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.

It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.

We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.

I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.

I believe art is a connection, like passing on a flame.

I hope my kids see imagination has power to change everything.

Outside the Olympics, there are massive discrepancies within all sports. But the positive side for me is that the Olympics are the biggest platform there is, and there's total equality across all sports.

I mean, for me, the reason I ride my bike and race is because I love doing it, not because I'm seeking recognition for it.

I have to make sure I get the right amount of protein and iron, and I take supplements for that. I think people would be surprised if they saw my diet, though; it's very normal.

Eating well is really important to me. That means having balanced meals, never missing a meal, never skipping a meal, having a balanced diet, and never doing anything extreme.

I am sorry for causing anyone to lose faith in sport.

I eat a lot more now than I ever used to. I have taken a real interest in nutrition and believe in the difference that makes when fueling your body correctly. That means never skipping a meal and making sure that my diet supports my training needs.

I remember taking my stabilisers off my bike with my dad in the back garden. It was a small little bike, and it was called Poppy, had balloons on it, and was purple.

'The Nightmare Before Christmas' is my number one biggest influence artistically in every way.

I love contrast in music. Being inspired by classical, actually - in high school especially - classical and metal both, I remember having this cool realization that they are really similar. It's just different instrumentation.

I love my cats more than I love most people. Probably more than is healthy.

I dream crazy vivid dreams. Like, entire movies. And sometimes I write songs about them.

I was always a drama queen. I remember playing in the kitchen, trying to get my mom to think I was dead and call the police. When she didn't, I would cry. I was always theatrical. I don't think any of my relatives are surprised.

The way that I've always gone about making music, the rule of thumb, has just been to make what I love.

I want to work with kids. I would love to be a teacher.

I design a lot of things that I wear onstage, but I'm always looking for unique stuff. I like creative things, so anything I can find at a secondhand costume shop to a Helmut Lang store, it doesn't matter - just unique stuff.

I love tiny, plastic realistic food magnets. I don't know why. They're hilarious.

Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn.

But it has, in addition, an even more precious quality - a consciousness of the human intelligence, the human spirit and that man is a social creature.

I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.

I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park.

Medicine men live in caves.

I know I'm not a self-indulgent idiot; I also know I'm not the second coming of Deepak Chopra. If I had believed either of those, or both, as some people do when they get famous, that's when the mental illness arrives.

I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be.

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family.

I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply desperately want to have a wedding.

I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be 'the happiest moment' of one's life.

Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people; it's also a political and economic contract of the highest order.

Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.

There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.'

You know, why at the end of your life should you assemble thousands of pages of 'Why am I so sad, why am I so depressed?' Instead, assemble thousands of pages of why you're so content.