Some guy is good at putting these verses together, and some guy is good at singing them. That's just the way it is.

I was kind of pathetic. That's what got me playing out in the street. I ran out of money and needed more gin for the night.

I don't care too much for thinking about the past. The truth is just another story. You can remember it any way you want; it's never gonna be the same twice.

I've been playing one way or another since I was about three years old. I don't remember not knowing how to play any instruments.

I don't think music is an art any more than cooking food is an art.

I'm just a guy that sings songs because that's what he likes to do, I guess.

I wouldn't consider myself a songwriter at all. Maybe I piece together a certain little thing here and there, but songwriters are people who do this with sheet music.

I don't associate much with anybody. I'm not big on all the teachings and groups and being a part of something, I guess.

I was born or raised in the church, so I guess the first songs I would have played would have been church songs.

I just started playing music on the street and walking around with a fiddle, and I think that's kind of when I started being serious - or as serious as it's going to get.

I didn't have any intention of playing music for a living or anything like that. I was just not doing well in my head or whatever you call it and drinking too much.

Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That's why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining...

Quite often it's not about what is said, but what isn't. And even when it's spoken, read between the lines. Listening with the heart is just as important as hearing with the mind.

Now do you understand? I am never changing who I am.

I think my most favorite subject was Lena Horne, because she embodies soul and grace and elegance and 'street'. She embodies everything. And beauty — great beauty.

[The UN should remain in New York] because every country needs a cesspool. And the UN is always interesting as a theater of the absurd.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

The truth is that most mission work is carried out where the church already exists Only small percentages are working where the church is non-existent.

Let no man grumble when his friends fall off, As they will do like leaves at the first breeze; When your affairs come round, one way or t'other, Go to the coffee house, and take another.

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.

For some reason, when you become a support to others, you become bigger than you are.