We are each one on a road going toward home, but we're not trying to get there for Christmas. We're trying to get there for eternity. We want to arrive home safely to our loving Father in Heaven. He wants us to make it safely there, so He has sent a ...
When I was eight, my mum found me humming to myself and scribbling on a scrap of paper. When she asked me what I was doing, I got shy. I was writing a Christmas song, and I had never shared my music with anyone before. Reluctantly, I sang it for her....
I have a love/hate relationship with Amy Grant, but I do go back to her Christmas albums once in a while. They're dated and sentimental and the production is nearly unlistenable, but there's something about her vocal performance that just feels reall...
One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.
I love my daughter, but she had me on couscous and fixed me pastas and made me eat oatmeal every morning and what else, turkey burgers, turkey bacon, and that kind of stuff. So she wants her dad to live a long time, and I do, too.
I wanted to be a senator from Illinois. I was obsessed with politics. My dad was friends with a lot of local politicians, so I would hang out with them on Election Day and hand out buttons. Somehow, even though they were opposite, I loved Ronald Reag...
Ours was a very progressive Protestant family, but my parents were God-loving rather than God-fearing. We went to church, and I still go with my mum and dad when I return home - it's a family thing. I played flute in my dad's marching band, but I had...
Everyone gets surprised because neither one of my parents play golf. Like I said in my speech, my aunt and uncle really love golf, and we visited them, and she gave me two clubs. Like people think when they don't know who my dad is, they think he's m...
I have loved music so much from when I was little, and I don't know whether it was because I saw my dad doing it and then I got the idea; I don't know what came first... But I always had a hairbrush in the mirror singing. I was always with him backst...
I watch political shows for a number of weeks in a row, and all I see are guys arguing with each other over issues I have no idea about. My brother, he loves war-torn places. My dad would always read the paper and tell me I should watch CNN, but I us...
I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into thei...
My dad got me a huge board when I was little. He loves to surf. He suited me up and sent me out on this huge wave. I went under, and when I came out and the board hit me in the face. So I said, I never wanted to do this again. I stayed away until I w...
Before college, I acted in my room, to classical music, because music tells stories. I'd put on a record and proceed, silently. I'd keep putting the needle back to a certain segment because I hadn't died well enough. I had to really, really feel dead...
I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I ha...
If you think of exercise as a 60-minute commitment 3 times a week at the gym, you're missing the point completely. If you think that going on a diet has something to do with nutrition, you don't see the forest through the trees. It is a lifestyle. I ...
In my long life I have found peace, joy, and happiness beyond my fondest hopes and dreams. One of the supreme benedictions of my life has been my marriage to an elect daughter of God. I love her with all my heart and soul.
Obviously, fans are the beginning and end for any artist. The minute your fans embrace you and accept you, you begin this ride of being in music and having a career doing something you love. You get to go be a kid and live out your dreams by performi...
I traveled to Ireland to research 'Sandcastles,' to visit the coastline where my ancestors looked toward America, the tiny town they once loved so much, and the docks from which they sailed toward their dreams of building a better life for their fami...
I have been fully involved in designing my stage shows; it's important to me to do something really unique and almost off-the-wall to bring the music and the visuals together. I love design and actually went to school for a bit for graphic design, so...
I love cities, I spend most of my life talking about cities. And the design of cities does have an effect on your life. You're lucky if you can see trees out of your window and you have a square nearby, or a bar, a cornershop, a surgery. Then you're ...
Aware that his disappointment has its source in a defective education, he looks with anxiety on his other daughters, whose minds, like lovely buds, are beginning to open. Where shall he find a genial soil in which he may place them to expand?
