This is how you know religion is failing because people think you're bonkers if you believe in God and also because it's so uncool believing in Jesus and everything.

I don't do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. I'm proud to be a troublemaker.

Women are to be valued for so much more than their sexuality. We aren’t merely objects of desire.

I understand that we are actually complicated people but we are also dreadfully simple.

I don't believe in any kind of artistic snobbery or musical snobbery. You know, to me, the sexiest and the most spiritual words ever uttered in rock and roll are wop babaloo balop bam boom.

Maybe it was mean, but I really don't think so. You asked for the truth and I told you.

When you dishonor the the utter glory and majesty of black people, you lie. Your heart lies to you and you let it

I grew up in a situation of extreme abuse, but there was no chance to talk about it, so music became the escape if you like.

At some point the entire population of the earth is gonna have to look back at the kind of essence of spirituality which is basically caring about each other.

We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent.

When I kissed you, you didn't mind. I thought I tasted of too many cigarettes, but you tasted like wine.

I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry; all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.

Most great records really start with the drums.

A Tom Ford three-piece makes you feel so confident, it's bananas.

For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.

I believed in myself and I am a firm believer you have to think the things you want and visualize.

Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience". "What's pessimism?" I said. "Religion without God.

When I was in high school and college, my other real focus was, actually, fiction writing. So in college, I had done all these seminars with these various writers-in-residence.

The one you fight with the most is always the one who’s most like you.

I'm not wise, but the beginning of wisdom is there; it's like relaxing into - and an acceptance of - things.