A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

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

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

I don’t try and be dark, but there are obviously darker emotions that I want to capture sometimes.

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

Football is a sad game.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

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

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

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.

Hatred is settled anger.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

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

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

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

I didn’t read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

My father will anticipate everything. He will leave you and me no chance to do a great and brilliant deed.

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.

I think love is one of the purest things you can sing about. One of the best things you can sing about.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

Even when a person has all of life’s comforts – good food, good shelter, a companion – he or she can still become unhappy when encountering a tragic situation.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

I’m not ashamed to say I fear something.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.