I really came to literature through poetry.

You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.

Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.

That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It's the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room.

Anyone who endeavors to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened. You are embarking on something that is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

Somebody asked me what I wanted to do. I just said I wanted to…just to give back to it what it’s given me. And to meet all the other people that are doing it…just to be in the world, really.

The best way to help the poor is the provide them property rights.

One martini is just right. Two martinis are too many. Three martinis are never enough.

So often, the singer is the sound of the record. People think they can cover anything, but the whole voice is the thing that's unrepeatable.

Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

I canceled a show once to be with someone that I loved.

One day, someone said to me, 'Do you want to go jump out of an airplane?' I felt like I had nothing to lose anymore, so I said, 'Why not?' And every day since then, I ask myself that question.