Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

I know that a large part of my fan base is gay. They’ve shown me love from the start. I mean in this industry, everyone from my glam people to my dancers are gay. You can’t be homophobic in this line of work – I’m a pop star!

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

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

No one wants advice – only corroboration.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

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

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

I hear my friends and my mom tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.

Nine men in ten are would be suicides.

A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

Alimony – the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

Fear is exciting for me.

Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.

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.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

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.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

Games lubricate the body and the mind.

‚Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

What you guys want, I’m for.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

Our brains are either our greatest assets or our greatest liabilities.

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

Every loss of life is terrible.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

Good entrepreneurs are community builders, actively involved with their communities and dedicated to the community’s well being. If you’re dedicated to your community, it will be dedicated to you.

I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.