My problem painting from my life was I found that you can't paint dirt without romanticising it.

You grow up trying to interpret, worshipping, visual symbols. It's a body-soaked imagery that you're looking at.

I think art is about human existence. Almost by default I'm expressing my experiences as a human.

I think the benefit of a Catholic childhood is your belief in visual symbols as transmitters of information and clues about life, whether it's the mystery of life or life in general.

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.

The human being is so complicated in some ways, and yet so simple in others. Sometimes, we need complex medication regimens. Yet, sometimes, we just need a good cry.

Those who have suffered, who have known poverty or oppression, are generally the most prone to kindness. Perhaps it is well to endure some misery if only to learn this lesson.

I've gotten very good at detaching whenever I have to go away for three months, which I realize is hard on friends and kind of selfish.

Nature in one of her beneficent moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors.

It's something that's always been there for me, that I have huge blue eyes - it's been something that people have always talked about.

I just personally feel like the best writing for actors exists in cable television.

I believe we have a profound fundamental need for areas of the earth where we stand without our mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

Songwriting is my gift from God