If I ever felt like I was getting lost in the hurricane that was storming around Nirvana, I’d just go back to Virginia.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

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

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Farewell, fair cruelty.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I’m doing, you know what I mean? And I think what’s gon‘ separate whoever’s gon go for something, that you ain’t gon‘ quit.

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

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

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

When I think of the love I feel for each member of our family, I sense, to a slight degree, the love that our Heavenly Father bears for His children.

I’m an emotional person. Sometimes I can’t help it.

I really believed that fear is contagious.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

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

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

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

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

He who walks in the eightfold noble path with unswerving determination is sure to reach Nirvana.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

William Maxwell’s my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for ‚The New Yorker‘ called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in ‚The New Yorker‘ in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did – about emotions and places.

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

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.

In one day, I have times where I’m feeling great, I feel like I love my life, and then 2:30 rolls around and I’m the angriest man alive. My wife sees it.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

Smiles are the language of love.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

I’m an emotional person.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

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