First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.

When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice. Growing older with grace is possible for all who will set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I never said I was the best in anything. I never said I’m an icon. The world decides all of that.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

I’m not a bad person.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I mean, I look at my dad. He was twenty when he started having a family, and he was always the coolest dad. He did everything for his kids, and he never made us feel like he was pressured. I know that it must be a great feeling to be a guy like that.

Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I’m upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

I have spent the greater part of my life in a hotel room with seven or eight kids, looking after everyone, sorting out fights, wiping noses, handing out towels, not having a clean towel left for me.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

For a tear is quickly dried, especially when shed for the misfortunes of others.

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

I mean we all need a second chance sometimes.