Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I’ve always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

Language is the dress of thought.

If I’ve got a problem with one of my clients that needs to get solved, guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to call them up, and I’m going to say, ‚Hey, here’s what’s going on. This is the situation. This thing went sideways. I didn’t expect it. Now it’s going to take me some more time to get you what you need.‘ But I’m going to do that upfront.

My game is really played above time. I don’t say that like I’m saying I’m ahead of my time. I’m saying, like, if I’m on the court and I throw a pass, the ball that I’ve thrown will lead my teammate right where he needs to go, before he even knows that that’s the right place to go to.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

I’m happiest with my family around me.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

When I am talking to people who I feel don’t like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

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.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

I love football and the intensity of football in Liverpool, this is what is very good for me.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

Respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that?

You are important enough to ask and you are blessed enough to receive back.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

I’m modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

If you ever go to a music session, you’ll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they’re reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

I am confident that nobody… will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

Being politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.