I've yet to find another soul who believes in me with the same fervency as my mother.

Music is my enchanter, the seducer of my emotions, the fire and ice that moves me.

I survive on moments of make-believe happiness.

Imagine fantasy and pretend as neither fantastical nor pretended.....and then believe it.

Family gathersto share good noise and good food.Gratitude abounds.

It is an incapacitating emotion one feels upon hearing the whispered words "I still love you" after deeply hurting that soul. Forgiveness isn't weakness.It is power.

Reality is a background so painted over by our own perceptions that every eye sees the world differently.

Theories look great on paper until reality scribbles all over the page.

Dreams become reality once the dreamer goes beyond imagining and acts them out.

I can and will improve the world.I will smile, show kindness, and be grateful.I refuse to be unhappy.

Giddy is a grin and giggles and that glint of goofiness in your gaze.

I love the pleasure of reading poetry.

My mother raised her eyebrow, and murmured, “And to think I was always worried that you didn’t have any friends. I suppose I should have been counting my blessings.

Her heart broke. Because of sorrow. Because of guilt. Because of repressed dreams, visions and fantasies. Because almost nothing in her life had gone as she'd hoped.

People have to take control of their own lives. Education is key because it also raises other social indicators like healthcare.

I have major respect for Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood and Sugarland. They are wonderful. They're superstars in the music business.

[...] each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves

I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the back of his neck.

To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.

Evangelicalism can only remain evangelical if it is passionately serious about truth and theology.

I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.