The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.
Sometimes it takes courage to leave.
I didn't know how to say goodbye. Words were stupid. They said so little. Yet they opened up holes you could fall into and never climb out of again.
Love is like light and there are two kinds, the bursting fireworks of the moment and the solid, fixed stars that sometimes become obscured in the heavens, but are always there, year after year, for a lifetime.
When I wrote, I felt better, as if I had remade the world all of a piece, the way I wanted it to be, not the way it was.
A person has to be strong in life. A person must practice strength, even if they don't feel it.
And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more.
Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.
Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
The religion of both Old and New Testaments is marked by fervent outspoken testimonies against evil. To speak smooth things in such a case may be sentimentalism, but it is not Christianity. It is a betrayal of the cause of truth and righteousness.
My goal from the very beginning was just to write good songs that don't require any production to be felt or understood. I wanted to be able to sit in a room with a guitar and play the song from beginning to end and have it be as impactful as if you heard the studio version with all the bells and whistles.