Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.

The name Zahra was to have been lman’s own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

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 would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

I think there are things that are based in your own dealings with someone that is a personal dealing, not a public dealing. Because you have personal experiences.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

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

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

If I get married, I want to be very married.

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

Love… it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

The real lover is the man who can thrill you just by touching your head or smiling into your eyes – or just by staring into space.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Really showing love requires more than just words.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

I had no bad moment in my relationship with Dortmund. Not one second.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

I’m focusing on me. I’m focusing on my family’s security, my family’s financial security, so that’s all I can do.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

I never fall in love.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you’re nuts, and you’re not as popular with girls as you should be.

My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.

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.