I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

The people in my songs are all me.

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

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

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

When anger rises, think of the consequences.

People were asleep, but I think they’re waking up now. Trump has given everybody a good kick, and people are waking up and realizing they’ve got to get involved.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

It’s easy to forget who you are.

I’m not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I’ve always liked the Buddhist religion. When I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

As you think, so shall you become.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

What good are fans? You can’t eat applause for breakfast. You can’t sleep with it.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.