“When I started singing about my life and what I was going through, I felt more confident. It was my own life, I was being myself, I was telling people what was happening.”

Composing was more difficult than writing things down.

We’re all competent in different ways, we’ve just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.

I’m from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn’t really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it’s totally wrong.

I was very rebellious, but my family was strict Christians – they would ask us, “What’s the shortest verse in the Bible?” and I was the one who always said “John 11:35” straightaway. It stayed with me, the Bible has stayed with me.

You can’t judge people by their cover.

William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician.

Happiness is overrated and money can’t justify it.

I like it when cities are melancholic. When it started snowing for example, I felt very lonely. I felt very comfortable and very relaxed. When that happens, I write. So I’ve been writing, not a lot, but I’m inspired everyday.

I loved English literature – if didn’t it would have been hard – but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines.

That’s how I always try to start my thoughts. I write them down first, eventually it turns into a poem, and if I feel like composing something to it, then I do that.

The real self is who you are when you’re at home, when you’re comfortable, and the false self is what you’re pretending – and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you’re within.

Obviously you live life for yourself and have your choice to believe what you want to believe in, but I know that the Bible can be used to appreciate life.

If you’ve got great parents, once you grow up and have to live by yourself, you’re going to create some fake self as you get comfortable wherever you are.

When you have a lot of fake selves, most of the time it’s because you haven’t had parents around so you try to build characters to protect yourself.

There’s a part in every person that has a fake self. We’ve had this since infancy due to our parents and our upbringing.

I don’t miss anything by being a bachelor. I don’t know any happily married couples, not even my parents.

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes.

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn’t work. You can be politically incorrect if you’re smart.