Of course I get hurt.

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 don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

I don’t feel bitterness, I don’t feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

God doesn’t dwell in the wooden, stony or earthen idols. His abode is in our feelings, our thoughts.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

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.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

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.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

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.

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

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

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

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

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

The best marriages are the ones where we can go out in the world and really put ourselves out there. A lot of times we’ll fail, and sometimes we’ll pull it off. But good marriages are when you can go home and know that your vulnerability will be honored as courage, and that you’ll find support.

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

No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.

There’s nothing better than having a baby. I’ve always loved children. I used to work summers at the YMCA and be in charge of, like, 30 preschool kids. I knew that when I had a child, I’d be overwhelmed, and it’s true… I can’t tell you how much my attitude has changed since we’ve got Frances. Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

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

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

A relationship can give you a gut wrenching feeling sometimes. It’s a real emotional ride.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

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

I am tough, but deep inside my toughness, I like to let people know I’m an old-fashioned mama’s boy.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

Death is the king of this world: ‚Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection – and usually a little judgment.

I think the perfection of love is that it’s not perfect.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

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

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.