Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

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.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It’s too controversial.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Words are loaded pistols.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

How to drive a guy crazy: send him a telegram and on the top put ‚page 2.‘

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.

Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

FaceTime helps me a lot. I feel like I’m at home even though I’m not.

You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it’s the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there’s not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.

I don’t want followers.