Oh, my mama was awesome. Very strict, overreligious, loved the Lord, loved rules. But she had to be that way because of where we were growing up, the neighborhood I was from.

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.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

I was adored once too.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

What we need to understand is that when traditions become laws, rules, obligations and expectations others put on us that we don’t want to fulfill, then they lose real meaning and steal the joy from our lives. And if we’re too religious, we won’t be able to be led by the Holy Spirit and enjoy an intimate relationship with Him.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

For me to talk with Obama and the conversation I had with him, I was letting him know that me and my fans have a special connection, and it’s love, and I believe that love is the answer.

Love is a state of being.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

Love is an interesting thing.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

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.

Hate has no place in the house of God.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Do you not realize that the love the Father bestowed on the perfect Christ He now bestows on you?

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

I think I have had so much blessing – I’ve had my brother, who was brilliant – I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother – Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

God wants to help us… He loves us… we are His children. But He will not force His help on us at any time. He sees us when we struggle and fight and complain our way through things. And I believe it breaks His heart, when all we have to do is ask Him for help.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.

My mother made me truly appreciate women.

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.

If someone is right for you, you’ll know it.

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.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.