Raw

Feel life in all its pain and mystery. If you can't feel pain, you won't feel joy, either. There's plenty of time to be comatose, like for the rest of eternity.

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. It is our default setting, hardwired into our boards at birth.

It's not a cause, that's an emergency. And when the disease gets out of control because most of the population lives on less than one dollar a day — that's not a cause, that's an emergency.

Because my parents fled in time, I escaped Hitler. Because of America's generosity, I escaped Stalin. Because of the vision of the Truman-Marshall generation, I have been privileged to live my life in freedom. Millions have still never had that opportunity.

Hunger, inadequate medical care, poor housing, and inferior schools are the enemies of wonder. Doors closed for so many of our innately curious children cannot easily be opened.

Being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are. There is no choice, either you is or you ain't.

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong.

You are going out. You will meet suffering. You will meet humiliation. You will meet sorrow. You will meet joy. You will meet success. You will be wanted. You will be unwanted. You will be loved. You will not be loved. All that is part of Jesus' fate.

I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.

To be in a locker room before a big game and to look into strong faces, which say, 'If we can only do it today' — to be with aggressive, ambitious people who have lost themselves in something bigger than they are — this is what living is all about.

It's all baloney to talk about this younger generation winning the peace. We won't come to power for 20 years. The same generation that got us into this mess has got to get us out of it. What really matters is not what new thoughts we kids are thinking but what new thoughts you older guys are thinking.