Our nature is to desperately want to believe and to take what we believe is the quickest path there even against our better judgment.

When we really see each other, we want to help each other.

In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: The professionals know they're winging it. The amateurs pretend they're not.

Collecting the dots. Then connecting them. And then sharing the connections with those around you. This is how a creative human works. Collecting, connecting, sharing.

Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.

I don't think of myself as particularly cursed or blessed. I think I got dealt a set of cards, and I'm playing with them, sometimes in heels, sometimes in combat boots.

When you're afraid of someone's judgment, you can't connect with them. You're too preoccupied with the task of impressing them.

Art is food for the soul, and an artistic climate is a healthy climate because it breeds empathy.

I crave intimacy to the same burning degree that I detest commitment.

I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is how do we make people pay for music? What if we started asking, how do we let people pay for music?

The world needs actual excitement and emotion more than it needs cool people.

We are united by something greater and more valuable than our beliefs alone: the freedom to have those beliefs, and believe what we want without persecution - we must protect that at all costs.

The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents - will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?

Any time you have a situation in which you are calling for more time rather than calling for Iraq to immediately comply, it plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Theory provides the maps that turn an uncoordinated set of experiments or computer simulations into a cumulative exploration.

Music is my personal addiction. So much of everything I've done has only been to open more doors for the music itself. It all gets back to the fact that I am, first of all, a songwriter and a singer.

Whats in the movie compared to what we shot is the tip of the iceberg.

I'm really nervous, because it's actually happening. You forget after a while when you start talking about something that it's actually going to happen.

I had a short story collection come out in 2006, and then I couldn't work on large projects for a long time because I was finishing my doctoral degree.

I like to write about women, not so much about the way they relate to men, but about the way they relate to each other.