I believe we live in a love-starved society. Everywhere you go there are probably people who haven’t had the right kind of love in their lives.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

It’s hard knowing who to trust with your personal life. When you cry in your room at night, you don’t always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

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.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Do I worry about being in the public eye and raising kids? Yeah. Any situation you’re in, you’re gonna worry about raising kids. But it’s champagne problems, too. There are people who can’t feed their kids.

If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

I was born with a happy heart, and I try to keep a good attitude. It’s not true that I’m happy all the time because nobody is, and we all go through our things.

I suffer from deep depression, so my only release is music.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

I wake up in the morning and my heart is light, man. It’s not heavy. I don’t have skeletons in the closet on their way out.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – Thats when I get in trouble.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

Babylon is everywhere. You have wrong and you have right. Wrong is what we call Babylon, wrong things. That is what Babylon is to me. I could have born in England, I could have born in America, it make no difference where me born, because there is Babylon everywhere.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinner table and talk to them about their mother who has cancer or their child who is struggling in school, and their fears about watching their lives go by, I think we’re all the same.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

I’m perpetually lonely.

Many churches today have special programs for people who are grieving, and these can be very helpful.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

I’m so happy I discovered early how wonderful music makes me feel.

When your soul is resting, your emotions are okay, your mind is okay, and your will is at peace with God, not resisting what He’s doing.

When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‚I never want to be alone.‘ That’s what I would say. I don’t want to be alone.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.