“Life is the question and life is the answer, and God is the reason and love is the way.”

Deep in the heart of the infinite darkness, a tiny blue marble is spinning through space. Born in the splendor of God’s holy vision, and sliding away like a tear down his face.

When God forgave me, I figured I’d better do it too.

Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to.

Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time.

I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

We’ll all be equal under the grass, and God’s got a heaven for country trash.

You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

I’m not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I’m thrilled to death with life.

There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.

Death and hell are never full, and neither are men’s eyes.

I knew that when I left there at the age of 18, I wouldn’t be back. And it was common knowledge among all the people there that when you graduate from high school here, you go to college or go get a job or something and do it on your own.

Stop your ears and close your eyes and try to find the face of love.

They’re powerful, those songs. At times they’ve been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.

A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.

There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

God’s most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.

Trust in God the Creator, in the Holy Spirit who moves everything towards the good.

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.

The care of God for us is a great thing, if a man believe it at heart: it plucks the burden of sorrow from him.

The Lord is the first to trust in you, and He also invites you to trust in yourselves.

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.