If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.

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.

I’ve been praying that we might have a spiritual awakening. But I think that becomes possible as individuals surrender their lives fresh and anew to Christ.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

I’ve had moments when I’ve thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there’s some vibration, some connection.

Smiles are the language of love.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

I want to rethink ‚surrender‘ as an active verb.

Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. They grow quietly, spreading underground, and erupt suddenly, all over the place.

The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

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.

Forgotten is forgiven.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

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.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

It’s not possible to stop love.

I believe when it comes to love, there’s something intangible about who we are attracted to, and I don’t think I have a pattern.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

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

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

Death surrenders us totally to God: it makes us enter into him; we must, in return, surrender ourselves to death with absolute love and self-abandonment since, when death comes, all we can do is to surrender ourselves completely to the domination and guidance of God.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

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

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

Whatever is making you so angry, it’s time for you to give it to God and get over it.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

There are some hurts that we experience that can be forgiven but we won’t forget them.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

I think there’s a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

The human heart is the same the world over.

Of course I get hurt.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

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

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

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

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.