Acknowledging the lucky breaks are paramount to enjoying life. Not being defensive about our successes/failures. So, in short.

If you make everything really on the nose so everyone knows exactly what you're talking about, it's often not as strong.

Sold my soul to the devil / for nice penmanship. / Now I write real pretty / but I'm starting to regret it.

I don't believe in the myth of the "self made man". Nobody gets through alone.

I used to be so young, how did I get so old?

You can't just look at the side of something that you want to see. You have to look at the whole round object and understand that there are parts of it that you don't like.

I think that's why art prevails: because it helps people in a fairly intangible, magical way feel more connected to each other.

I think the future and the past are equally hypothetical.

Sometimes I just don't have time to wait for the muse to come, so I've developed things to force the muse to come back.

I'm influenced in a million different ways by a million songs that I've heard and digested.

The idea that things intrinsically were just better is so stupid to me because they never were. It's all relative.

Life is beautiful, so celebrate it like the gift that it is.

You ought to live life with great passion.

I don't think an opera house is ever a place that can make you entirely happy.

We are made by God, we are made like God, we are made for God.

Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level

Focus your attention on the center of your stomach, in the area of your naval. Feel that this is an area of tremendous strength.

When we smile, the world smiles with us: each experience of joy is an experience of joy for all people and a victory for human kind.

A global economy requires a global currency.

Things are always worse in the steady watches of the night.

But nothing really clicked for me until I gave up completely on hitting the overlap and just did what I loved, even when I thought nobody else in the world would be interested.