“It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.”

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.

The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I’ve got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

It’s good to believe in yourself, but there are people out there who can make or break you.

My arms are too short to box with God.

Until things are brighter. I’m the man in black.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.

Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird.

We must look for ways to be an active force in our own lives.

Obscurity and a competence – that is the life that is best worth living.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.