Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

I had slumps that lasted into the winter.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

Every artist was first an amateur.

When I was 11 I became very depressed. It had a lot to do with the climate and ecological crisis. I thought everything was just so wrong and nothing was happening and there’s no point in anything.

If it weren’t for painting, I wouldn’t live; I couldn’t bear the extra strain of things.

Even paranoids have real enemies.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

Encouragement to all women is – let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I like Cardi B!

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It’s good for them.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

It’s not at all good when your cancer is ‚palpable‘ from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn’t even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

Going to a therapist is not something you do when you’re growing up as a street kid in Toronto.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.

Meditation is a great way to keep my body well-centered while juggling shooting schedules and recording sessions.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.