Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

What an encouraging thought that Jesus – our beloved Husband – can find comfort in our lowly feeble gifts! Can this be, for it seems far too good to be true? May we then be willing to endure trials or even death itself if through these hardships we are assisted in bringing gladness to Immanuel’s heart.

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.

Love is only one of many passions.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you’re going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can’t do it any other way. But you don’t carry it beyond the set.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Death is the king of this world: ‚Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

I never sympathise with the accused unless there’s a chance the accused is not guilty, but I certainly don’t ever sympathise with the criminal.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God’s waiting room.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‚Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.‘ I said that because we all cried for a week. The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

Creative output, you know, is just pain. I’m going to be cliche for a minute and say that great art comes from pain.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.