I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‚Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.‘ I said that because we all cried for a week. The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Fear is real, but so is love.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

Well, it’s looks like I’ve a love-hate thing going on with Monaco.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

I think women love very hard. We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes, I don’t know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

It’s not possible to stop love.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Yes, it is one of my ultimate aims – it is the ultimate sense of football: to make the people happy, to let them live some emotions that you usually can’t get.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.