To be in any way a positive contribution, that’s all anybody wants to be. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wanted to be an artist, be a mother. You want to feel that in your life you’ve been of use, in whatever way that comes out.

Temptation is just the feeling that you’re the most independent person on planet Earth. That you know everything. That’s something that we all go through as a kid. Now, this lifestyle that I’m in, the same thing exists! But it’s 10 times worse, because everything is at my disposal. When you’re in the limelight, you can get anything you want.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

God didn’t make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God… If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

The deepest desire of the human spirit is to be acknowledged.

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

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.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

God sent me on earth. He send me to do something, and nobody can stop me. If God want to stop me, then I stop. Man never can.

God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

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.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.