...When I look back on my life's greatest traumas...I see that each one has something in common. No matter how life-shattering they felt at the time, there was an end to them.

When you're right there in the crisi, you'll do anything to make yourself feel better, distract yourself from the misery, deny reality, not matter how stupid.

If you're happy inside you don't have to convince everyone else.

You can hate a person with your whole body, but love is a stubborn thing, it clings on in your heart.

But at least if you hint and are rejected, the rejection is blurable rather than blistering. Whereas if you ask outright and are refused, the humiliation is as stark as a streaker on a football.

There's a time in your life when you have to stop looking back and start looking forward because otherwise you're going to walk down the road one day and bump into a lamppost. But it's not easy.

Any fool can write, we start learning it at school at the age of three....

OUR MOTHER EARTH CAN LIVE WITHOUT US BUT WE CANT LIVE WITHOUT HER

I have both the violent turbulence of the storm and the quiet promises of God in the storm. And what I must work to remember is that something is not necessarily stronger simply because it’s louder.

It's okay to write crap. Just don't try publishing it while it's still crap.

Separation of powers is a problem for foreign policy.

Life is like The Muppet Show, but instead of Muppets there's anxiety.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

All men are created to lead, but we need somebody to lead us.

When I think about a Chicago sound, I think about the Great Migration from the South. Many of Chicago's black artists are from Mississippi, Arkansas, and with them was brought blues and gospel music.