Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

I think it’s my responsibility, as a person of influence… to sometimes try to do what I can.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

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?

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

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

Choose people who lift you up.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

Mine is better than ours.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

My focus is my art, and that’s what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I’ve turned down many things that I just didn’t believe in.

Back in the day, what motivated me was overcoming myself. Now I believe in being a leader. I’ve done it all – I’m good. Now, it’s about setting an example for others to follow. I can’t just talk it – I have to live it.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

I call architecture frozen music.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

If merely ‚feeling good‘ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

My life is mine to remember.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it’s like a battery: you’ve got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

What I’m hoping is that every album I’m going to do will give my audience something different, and that they’ll grow as I do.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Yeah, I was a delinquent. It was when I was in the ninth grade. I was doing stupid stuff, and the cops came into the class. I was humiliated more than anything.

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.