I'm so, so thrilled that [Pope Francis] is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

To remain neutral in situations of injustice is to be complicit in that injustice.

Our maturity will be judged by how well we are able to agree to disagree and yet continue to love one another, to care for one another, and cherish one another and seek the greater good of the other.

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

Let your pain lead you to creativity

There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind.

The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality

With this record [The Colour and the Shape], I started taking the lyrics more seriously. This is a very personal album.

True creativity flows only from stillness. When stillness becomes conscious, the spiritual dimension enters your life and you begin to be guided by an intelligence far greater than the human mind.

Only love can penetrate all your karmas and resistances and set your heart on fire with the awareness of its true nature.

I want to keep on doing 'Girls' Generation' forever. Please let me do so.

If you think about for example, proportionality and beauty, things like that, these seem to be some kind of representations of a kind of unity.

Lyrics are tough for me and I never feel like they're quite done.

I never bought a man who wasn't for sale.