I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don’t believe in it.

My whole life is a theater piece.

No matter what, I always make it home for Christmas. I love to go to my Tennessee Mountain Home and invite all of my nieces and nephews and their spouses and kids and do what we all like to do – eat, laugh, trade presents and just enjoy each other… and sometimes I even dress up like Santa Claus!

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

I was born on a full moon. Both my children were born on full moons, too. Some people say that’s scary. It is what it is, man, I don’t be trippin‘. I couldn’t tell God when I wanted to be born.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

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

Life is a song to me.

I like entertaining people. I really miss it.

My mom and I are very close.

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

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

My other brother-in-law died. He was a karate expert, then joined the army. The first time he saluted, he killed himself.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

Cry if you have a compound fracture, by all means. Or if your grandpa died. But otherwise, save it for your pillow.

I have no human feelings.

An agent won’t help you get drafted higher, won’t make you win more games, and won’t make you faster or stronger.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

All that the future holds in store for each sacred child of God will be shaped by his or her parents, family, friends, and teachers. Thus, our faith now becomes part of our posterity’s faith later.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

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

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Christmas morning, I’m going to open presents with my kids. I’m going to take pictures of them opening the presents. Then I’m going to come to the Staples Center and get ready to work.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.

I began singing in dive bars and really small clubs. I dragged my piano down the stairs, and I went down the street with my keyboard, and I would go to every different dive bar that I could get to agree to let me play. I’d call and pretend I was Lady Gaga’s manager.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, ‚Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?‘ And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

I didn’t have to win, and winning wasn’t important to me. Being world champion wasn’t important to me. What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

One day it will be over, and I don’t care.

I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

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

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‚Mad Men‘ episode.