The end of parenthood is implicit in its beginning: separation.

Love ... is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me.

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own intimate sensitivity.

No one questions the fact that verbal language has to be learned, but the commonplaceness of visual experience betrays art; people tend to assume that, because they can see, they can see art.

Artists have no choice but to express their lives.

Art comes into the highest part of the mind, that with which we can know the presence of God.

I've struggled all my life to get maximum meaning in the simplest possible form.

the knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion.

I have no home but me.

I have slowly come to realize that a family is composed of people who are teaching one another.

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

To pray is to say that there is more than I can see, and more than I can do. There is more going on than meets the eye.

I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.

He is not the same person as when we met, but . . . neither am I. Time has refined us, but instead of pushing us apart, we’re closer than ever.

I mean Buckingham Palace has never hired a professional public relations outfit let alone a Madison Avenue type and they would throw up their hands in horror at the very idea.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.

I hate those earnest TV documentaries that are the world according to people with glasses who know better than you.

There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding up- hill.In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

You never have a friend all figured out. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock.

The mark of a true crush... is that you fall in love first and grope for reasons afterward.