If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

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

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

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

When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult.

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.

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.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don’t get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

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.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

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

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

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.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

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

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

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

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

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I’ve always been like that; I don’t smile in any pictures.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

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

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.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

Love is the one wild card.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

In the world of money and investing, you must learn to control your emotions.

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

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

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.

Language is the dress of thought.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

When you think about it, three of our biggest financial decisions in life are made at times of peak emotional excitement: deciding to get married, buying a home, and having kids.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.