I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

I’m crazy and I don’t pretend to be anything else.

Why am I here? I’m not lucky. That’s God.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

I’ve experienced great things, I’ve experienced great tragedies. I’ve done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there’s more.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

I don’t want followers.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‚I used everything you gave me‘.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they’re already asleep.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

The Bible says that God has a reason for keeping us here; if He didn’t, He would take us to Heaven far sooner.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

An artist or a creative person of any kind goes about their work because it’s their path, it’s what excites them, it’s what aligns their soul with who they truly are, who they showed up to be.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

I don’t mind people hating me, because it pushes me.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

You can’t go backward in life.

I don’t really get nervous that much, or if I do, only I know. It’s all inside me. I am good at hiding everything.

I let the American people down.

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.