Pretend your brain is a white board. Is it covered with to-do lists and “DO NOT ERASE”? Is there space for drawing and combining ideas?

Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.

If we don’t appropriately manage the ‘open loops’ in our life, our attention will get pulled.

Overwhelm comes from not clarifying what your intended outcome is, not deciding what the very next action is, and not reminding yourself of your intended outcome and action.

You need to transform all the ‘stuff’ you attract and accumulate into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information.

Getting things done requires defining what “done” means and what “doing” looks like.

Mastering your workflow involves capturing what has your attention, clarifying what it means, putting it where it belongs, reviewing it frequently and engaging with it.

If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.

Anxiety and guilt don’t come from having too much to do; it comes from breaking agreements with yourself.

America is a very special place. In this country, you have the best and the worst at the same time. Whatever you can imagine.

Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).

Jim Sheridan, the MP who wants to ban sketchwriters from the Commons for being rude about politicians, is a blithering idiot. Sorry, scrub that - clearly a very thoughtful person with whom I might conceivably disagree on some marginal issues. A blithering savant, perhaps.

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.

I'm definitely not a super great guitarist. Ultimately, I just write a lot of love songs.

Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!

To some degree Satanism is purely a kind of disease of Christianity. You've got to really be Christian to believe in Satan.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

I'm devious, cruel, cunning and addictive.

Id say the key to a good relationship is communication

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

Trust the tale, not the teller.

Perfection is a toxic desire. We are not supposed to be perfect. The challenge is not to be perfect, it's to be whole.

Elections are about choosing sides, but inaugurations are about closing ranks.

Public servants are paid to serve the American people. Do it well.

I'm 100 percent convinced that Pablo Escobar was a human being. And he was a very interesting one. For sure, he was a very, very, very mean and awful human being in many senses, but he wasn't an alien. He was a person. He had friends; people laughed at his jokes. And he was a very contradictory person as well.

Success is to wake up each morning and consciously decide that today will be the best day of your life.

New Orleans has a unique history as a great melting pot of all kinds of cultures, and that manifests itself now through the food, the music, and the kinds of people who live there.

I don't want real life necessarily to be seen only as a context to heighten the deepness my work.

It's always such a joy that you wake up in the morning and there's work to do.

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.

What I like about Broadway is that you are still entertaining. You're standing in front of an audience every night and the critics are not friends at all - and that's good for me as an entertainer because I want to grow. It also gives me the structure of remaining in one city so I can get creative in different ways.

I hear you in my dreams I feel your whisper across the sea I keep you with me in my heart You make it easier when life gets hard.