There is so much temptation to hold on to my career even more now. To try to micromanage and dictate every little aspect. But that's not how I want to do things anymore. I'm thinking about how can I trust God more. How can I surrender more? How can I...
I believe God's keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, some way, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can't give God something without God giving you ...
About four days a week, I do pretty good at having a morning prayer time. But even at that, it's a rambling sort of thing. What I have learned to do better is to try to keep my mind turned toward God and ear inclined toward God throughout the day, an...
Music was my salvation. If music hadn't come into my life, I'd be talking to you from a penitentiary. I found I had a talent for music, which pulled me up from pretty dire circumstances. I was lucky I had a guiding light in music to keep me focused a...
In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generat...
One of the things I did to make myself feel better is that I kicked up my running even more. I knew that I had to stay active, that I had to keep living as if my life was actually going to unfold naturally because when you stop, when you freeze, and ...
I see around 100 shows a month, going from Niketown-size palaces where you feel like yelling, to storefronts in Bushwick. Each has to pay the bills; keep artists happy; and cope with collectors (oy!), curators (ay-yi-yi), critics (woo-hoo!), and occa...
Life throws up enough road blocks to keep you from writing; you can't be adding to them yourself by saying you can only write in one specific place. I'm in New York half the time and Texas half the time, and I work wherever - in my computer bag I hav...
When most people think about success, the first thing that usually comes to their minds is money. But in reality, that is not what success is really made of. Success is triumphing in every endeavor that you engage yourself in. Success is getting back...
The way that you feel about your life will always have everything to do with the things that you constantly say to yourself. Stop worrying about what others are thinking or saying about you. Idle minds will forever have negative things to say about o...
The path to a better future should be the only vision that lies in your mind, and the motivation to keep moving forward should continuously boil deep down inside you. There is absolutely not reason to turn your back on your true destiny in life. The ...
if someone has just hurt you or broken your heart, if someone has just died, all the grace you need is there-waiting for you to receive it. As long as we are pulled inward-despair and self attention, we aren't free to reach for God's grace. If we mea...
Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every person. One that we reveal to the world and another we keep hidden inside. A duality governed by the balance of light and darkness. Within each of us is the capacity for both go...
Keep yourself motivated. You've got to be motivated, you've got to wake up every day and understand what that day is about; you've got to have personal goals - short term goals, intermediate goals, and long term goals. Be flexible in getting to those...
I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, th...
Can you see why I can't stand a lie? People have been lying to me all my life. Even the person I loved the most in the world." Sometimes people lie for good reasons," Jonah said. "To keep you safe, or to avoid breaking your heart, or to make it possi...
Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plo...
You think that it’s not magic that keeps you alive? Just ‘cause you understand the mechanics of how something works, doesn’t make it any less of a miracle. Which is just another word for magic. We’re all kept alive by magic, Sookie. My magic�...
The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is...
Keep music and art alive in our schools because the greatness of a country is not measured by wars that are won, by territory annexed or even the size of a deficit. It is measured by the beauty of the art work by talented hands, the sounds of the mus...
If the only people we seek to impress are within our own ivory towers of artistic excellence or our hallowed institutions, we will find the audience is gone in 20 to 30 years. I find as I keep a broader audience in mind, I choose to sing and say more...
