I think that people assumed I was white because of my last name. My father is Caucasian, my mother is Hispanic. But English was my second language, believe it or not.

Nobody notices when things go right.

Only in a true life or death scenario can you have mental clearness to know that you cannot feel guilty for surviving.

I deal with the hatred by loving my supporters more.

As a result of the incident and subsequent media coverage, I have been forced to leave my home, my school, my employer, my family and ultimately, my entire life.

Leisure, the highest happiness on earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude.

Conceit and confidence are both of them cheats; the first always imposes on itself, the second frequently deceives others too.

Make choices in life that don't leave people bitter, worse off or confused. Any choice that leads you to do this is a choice that didn't include God in the decision making process.

Keep up with social media. Twitter and Facebook are both great ways to get your music out, especially internationally.

the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.

I think that we're all always just working on finding how that balance functions for us, given today's circumstances.

Art lies because it's social.

There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.

It is easier to recognize the quality of leadership in the behavior of their followers than it is in the behavior of the leader.

When a crow says an intelligent thing, chickens may laugh at it. This is the laughing of the sand castles at the powerful waves!

I tend to play covers when I'm gearing up for creating new song. Singing other people's songs is a way that I get inspired.

When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.