Right after 'Raymond' I had a world-is-my-oyster attitude, but I found out I don't like oysters. I had this existential emptiness. 'What is my purpose? Who am I?' I had a big identity crisis.

No one could have less faith in the absolute and definitive importance of the work created by man, because I believe that this world is nothing but a dream.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.

A true friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else.

I love some of the most hateful tweets. I think they're very funny. In the negative attacks on me, there are frequently some real displays of humor. I want to reply, but I won't, because there are all sorts of other people making serious points that I care about, and I don't want them to be discouraged.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

Whether rich or poor, a home is not a home unless the roots of love are ever striking deeper through the crust of the earthly and the conventional, into the very realities of being, not consciously always; seldom, perhaps; the simplicity of loving grows by living simply near nature and God.

I wrote '('Til) I Kissed You' about a girl I met in Australia. Her name was Lilian, and she was very, very inspirational. I was married, but... I wrote the song about her on the way back home.

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Music is love in search of a word.

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

Four things for success: work and pray, think and believe.