The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

I’ve laid my friends bare.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

There’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

People were saying that David Geffen and I had gotten married and it just blew me away. Not that they thought I was gay, but that they thought I could land a guy that hot.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

Trying to meet new women, it’s always a little more difficult as opposed to calling somebody I knew that’s single and trying to rebuild that connection.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.

I’ve done the bad-boy thing. It was fun for a good three months. But the thing about bad boys is, you have to keep in mind, you’re never gonna marry a bad boy.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

I’ve seen my friends take someone back after they’ve cheated because they fit perfectly.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

I respect Chris Brown. I’d like to call myself a friend – I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

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

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

You cannot mix sports with politics.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

I won’t let people write anything they want to about me.

I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

Jealousy is just love and hate at the same time.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

I want someone who can trust that my big hands are going to take care of them.

The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

If I get married, I want to be very married.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Ultimately, who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

As soon as I go out into the world, I belong, in a way, to everyone else. It’s legal to follow me. It’s legal to stalk me at the beach. And I can’t call the police or ask them to leave.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.