The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

So many people think of me as a character on TV, but first and foremost, my passion is teaching dance and creating employable, working dancers.

I always thought about working in England because of the kind of football, the intensity of football. Liverpool was first choice.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

I swam underwater for 50 meters at a time and walked the length of the pool underwater, with a brick in each hand, all on a single breath.

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.

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’m really interested in smells. I think I’d like to own a perfumery someday.

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

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

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.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

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

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

Acting is happy agony.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

The incomparable greatness of the religions of the East lies in their having been second to none in vibrating with the passion for unity. This note, which is essential to every form of mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names of their Gods.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

All you need is love.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

I kind of love Cole Miller.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

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

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.