Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.

Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.

I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.

You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.

Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.

...What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.

A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.

Sometimes all we have to do is make the simple choice to stop being angry or fearful in order to discover the infinite wonders of the Universe that await us behind a door we shut long ago.

The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

We need the whole song, all the verses and the choruses to serve us as our own story unfolds because- trust me- life is hard, but God is good.

To just write one song to then go and play huge festivals all around the world it's exciting and it's never really been the case.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Hope is not a substitute for pain. Hope is in spite of pain.

Mine is not a religion of the prison-house. It has room for the least among God's creation.

If you're going to let pressure stop you from fulfilling your dreams, you're robbing yourself.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.