When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

Little by little, not by making big promises, I need to be calmer, read more, spend more time with my loved ones, and be more mindful about nature and environment.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

‚Border‘ was the first movie that I watched on the big screen. It always takes me back to my childhood.

Not many people know this about me, but I’m a natural blonde. My hair went from light blonde naturally to a darker kind of blonde. My mother dyed my hair dark when I was a child, as I loved the look then. So I’m basically a natural blonde.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

The extreme weakness of quantum gravitational effects now poses some philosophical problems; maybe nature is trying to tell us something new here: maybe we should not try to quantize gravity.

Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?

Learning to live for others isn’t something that just comes naturally to anybody. You have to train yourself to do it.

All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit – the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

I’m definitely a Polaroid camera girl. For me, what I’m really excited about is bringing back the artistry and the nature of Polaroid.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Understanding is a two-way street.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren’t very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods.

I love the sea.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Nature does nothing in vain.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.