"That's the classic nature of people, though. We'll skip the basics and get pissed when the sexy stuff doesn't work."

“I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.”

“I don't think because I hang out with enough black people, I'm gonna turn black. What kind of rationalization is that? I'm just friends with people that I like. I don't care what skin color you are.”

“There are so many times in life when you have to suppress what you're feeling. A lot of kids have to deal with that in a school environment: You're not allowed to be happy, sad, depressed, over the moon. Being an actor not only do I get to play an angsty teen, but I get the support that I need to be Yara.”

“There comes a time, there comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now and I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts go unchallenged.”

“Don't give up. It's just the weight of the world.”

Source : Song: You Are Loved, Album: Awake, 2006

“No writer should minimize the factor that affects everyone, but is beyond control: luck.”

Source : FaceBook post by John Jakes from Mar 16, 2015

“I want my music to be something that people use in order to access parts of themselves. So in that sense, every piece I write is about all emotions at once, about the lines in between. It's never only about one thing or another. It's emotionally getting at those things that we can't really describe - things for which we don't have labels. So yes, it's about something, and it has a use. It's neither about nothing nor about something concrete - it's about what you bring to it as a listener.”

“I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?”

Source : Kathleen Norris (1997). “The Cloister Walk”, p.80, Penguin