“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.”

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.

In a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.

If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.

Perhaps adjustment and stabilization, while good because it cuts your pain, is also bad because development towards a higher ideal ceases?

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

Be independent of the good opinion of other people.

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

What you don’t know has power over you; knowing it brings it under your control, and makes it subject to your choice. Ignorance makes real choice impossible.

Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth.

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

If the essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later.

We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves.

When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

We may define therapy as a search for value.

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

I would like to see more airplay for all artists, no matter what age. I think there’s a lot of money being spent toward the young guys, but a lot of the older guys are the ones who blazed the trail for those young guys.

All artists are crazy.

Since I was young, the artistic expression that fashion embodies has inspired me. It’s a way to communicate oneself.

The more you are blessed with experience, the fuller and the more enriched you are in your craft.

Everyone liked me when I went up on the stage at a talent search in elementary school, and that’s when I decided to become a music artist.

It’s very hard to be an artist, on my first album, and I’m like asking for money for a music video for every song – it’s so hard to do. You have to pick your battles for sure, but I definitely want – and I’ve always worked to make it all connect – for all of it to feel cohesive.

Whatever obstacle comes your way, you gotta be prepared to jump over it! And I think that’s what separates the legends from the regular artists. It’s all in how you manage that success, and how you deal with the controversy when it actually comes.