“No matter what you do or say, there’s nothing that you can do to make people understand you.”

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.

They laugh at me because I’m different; I laugh at them because they’re all the same.

If you read, you’ll judge.

I mean I like to be passionate and sincere but I also like to have fun and act like a dork. Geeks unite.

I’m on my time with everyone.

Do your own thing. Others own their own thing. If you copy too much, you’ll find yourself in late night cocktail lounge cover band limbo.

Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

I only remember a few things about Jimmy Carter. He had big lips and liked peanuts. I now know that Jimmy Carter was and is a good man.

Drugs are bad for you. They will fuck you up.

I didn’t find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

I want to do something different, really different, and if it alienates people that’s too bad.

If chasing cool is important to you, you’re an idiot!

I just hope I don’t become so blissful I become boring. I think I’ll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

What is important is that we stop and realize, “Okay. This is fine. I can enjoy that. But what is really important, what I’m really going to take away with me from this life, is my connection with other people.

The easiest way to a happy life is; instead of making others lose, make them win.

I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response, in responding to the misfortune, you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on, or to do better.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

And I don’t think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there’s another set of moral codes, but I don’t think government has a role.

I savor life. When you have anything that threatens life it prods you into stepping back and really appreciating the value of life and taking from it what you can.

Through reading, I escaped the bad parts of my life in the South Bronx. And, through books, I got to travel the world and the universe. It, to me, was a passport out of my childhood and it remains a way – through the power of words – to change the world.

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one’s faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one’s life.