"Your debut record, in terms of lyrical content, can be about the last couple of years of your life obviously, but your first record into the world is also about everything else that you've ever experienced in your life until that moment."

“We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.”

“It's ridiculous to insinuate that the social recognition of homosexual civil unions damages families or the institution of marriage.”

Source : "Out on the Right: On Being Gay, Conservative and Catholic". Interview with Markus Feldenkirchen and René Pfister, www.spiegel.de. November 23, 2012.

“Sorrow is not sickness-unless it becomes a permanent state of mental ill-health. The point is there are indeed stages of grief, as all the therapists tell us, but they do not obey some great unseen timetable.”

“America has abandoned the strong woman of spirituality and is shacking up with the harlot of materialism.”

“Aim for the top. There is plenty of room there. There are so few at the top it is almost lonely there.”

“This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.”

“People have different impressions of themselves, and where reality lies is somewhere in between.”

“Every institution places its ultimate weight on preserving its own life. That is why the Church emphasizes loving God over loving one's neighbor.... The push for justice on the other hand might be at the center of the Gospel but it also attacks the balance of power in the society. Since the rich always exploit the poor, to give the poor power, dignity and humanity makes them less pliable, less cooperative.”