As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.

If you get down and quarell everyday, you’re saying prayers to the devil, I say.

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

What’s so beautiful about Miami is that we support each other. We’re just one big family, not just the entertainers, just everyone in general.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

Women – always in trouble with them, but can’t live without them.

No matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.

A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.

I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.

My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.

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.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

My son has died of AIDS.

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

I kinda live where I find myself.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I’ve done some analysis of the biblical stories as part of my psychological work. I knew that I had more to do, and every time I’ve done it, it’s been extremely valuable. It makes me a better teacher because I have a richer understanding of cultural history.

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

You can’t go backward in life.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

A friend in power is a friend lost.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

The Sabbath provides a wonderful opportunity to strengthen family ties.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

A woman can’t be alone. She needs a man. A man and a woman support and strengthen each other. She just can’t do it by herself.