It's a hard life if you don't weaken.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

Often the contempt of vainglory becomes a source of even more vainglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt is something one is proud of.

Without true celebration discipline is obnoxious.

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

We can do better. ...We can't ignore the inequalities that persist in our justice system that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality.

Your ability to communicate to your young people will determine your success.

As far as when I'm writing a song, I think I'm writing first and foremost for myself.

True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together.

But I've never looked at myself as being particularly funny.

I don't believe in dining on an empty stomach.