The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Kissing someone is pretty intimate, actually very intimate, and your heart always kind of skips a beat before you do that.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

I don’t think people are going to talk in the future. They’re going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs.

I like learning more about people; I like to talk to people.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

See, behind all my tough, rough exterior is basically a marshmallow, maybe a pussycat. But not a wimp!

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn’t picked me up.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

The kids never listen to you, especially the youngest ones.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

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

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

The Internet has compromised the quality of debate.

My name can’t be that tough to pronounce!

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it’s employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Hatred is self-punishment.

I’m a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

The only shame is to have none.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

‚Good English‘ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

I try to speak in everyday language. I feel like God has gifted me to take Bible principles and make them practical.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn’t going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I’ve ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn’t want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.