Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.

If you look at the movie ‚Belly,‘ I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I’m not in the game for the wrong reasons. I’m not in the game for the glory. I’m in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I’m a highly intelligent individual.

The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

I dote on his very absence.

No, I’m not anguished and tormented.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

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.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

Love to everybody who is out there progressing and taking things to the next level.

To be able to throw one’s self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman’s smile – that is happiness.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

I’m definitely gaining new fans, and that’s the key of any success… gain more love.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

I’m a human being and I fall in love and sometimes I don’t have control of every situation.

I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Tell your wife often how terrific she looks.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

You can’t be in love with a Google search.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Love is the most powerful thing in the world, and you know, what love brings is joy.

Great loves too must be endured.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

No matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.