My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It’s when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won’t like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it’s based on femininity.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

An unused life is an early death.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

If you’re going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don’t love it, then we don’t need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.

I’m totally myself.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

I draw pleasure in governance, in doing new things and bringing people together. That pleasure is all I need from life.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

One of the things people don’t really recognise about the similarities between country and hip-hop is that they’re celebrations of pride in a lifestyle.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God’s divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego’s insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Where there is love there is life.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

I don’t know who I touch and who I don’t. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know the reasons I’ve been so well received.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

Water is life, and clean water means health.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‚oh my god, its all going down the tubes‘, like the blues often is.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

My goal was never to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.