The happy and efficient people in this world are those who accept trouble as a normal detail of human life and resolve to capitalize it when it comes along.

Trouble is the thing that strong men grow by. Met in the right way it is a sure-fire means of putting iron into the victim's will and making him a tougher man to down forever after.

If you want to know the real reasons behind that attitude, think of the thought behind that attitude

When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.

They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.

A democracy without faith is just a machine without power. Nothing can make it function except faith in itself, in the ordinary man and woman.

It's an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.

..we are trained as children to get good grades, get a good job, get a good spouse, get children, get ahead. In all this getting we get something else: anxiety and depression.

There is an attitude in the culture that says that everybody is entitled to their opinion. You got to respect their opinion. No, you damn well haven't got to respect their opinion.

Elvis and I continued to be friends, and I saw him once or twice a year. But he was a troubled person.