You know, if you don't do nothin, you don't do nothin.

I know how I like to be treated, so I always start by saying, 'Could you give me a moment of your time, I know you're very busy,' and usually, they will.

I explained to the lady my love for John and his work, and she made it possible for me to purchase one of the 24 proofs, the one for 'I'm So Tired,' which I have on my piano at home.

You know, it sounds corny, but I believe in myself. And I work hard.

It's not an act, it's just my way.

The biggest deal for me was that all 24 winners are placed on the Billboard CD of the Year, which went out to 500 of the biggest Music Reps in the business, from radio and press to management and booking.

Married and divorced, three beautiful daughters, two in college. The other one is 16, lives with her mom. I'm 46, I've worked for the Post Office for 18 years, seven facilities in three states.

You know, if you don't do nothin, you don't do nothin.

If I go to a seminar and someone like you or someone like him is talking, I'm never part of the group that rushes him directly afterward. I always wait in the back corner with my head down until everyone is gone, and then I go up and do my thing.

You get a letter from her agency embracing you into the family that says, 'It is our goal now to help you achieve your dream of being a songwriter, in John's memory.'

Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.

I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.

He asked if I was a songwriter, and I said yeah, that I was in town because I'd won this contest. He said, okay, then he was gonna play me his hit, and started singing 'When it's time to relax, one beer stands clear... '

I really believe in myself. I'm the hardest worker I know, and one of the best songwriters. There's a craft to it, and it takes a long time to hone it, and I work really hard at it.

As corny as it may sound, my true goal was to crack the Americana market.

I'd just hit the Billboard thing, and I had a good feeling. About a month ago, I received a call that said I was in the running, that I'd made the final 25. So I just wanted to place.

I liked the way they treated the first, second, and third place finishers equally. It was an amazing year. I only entered two song contests this year; I won one and placed second in the other. And I entered each of them a day or two before the deadline.

I've been playing music all my life, from being a choir soloist at Symphony Hall as a youngster to playing in bands through high school and college at Kent State. Went in the service at 17, out before I was 21.

Elmcrest CC, in Cedar Rapids, is where it all started when I was growing up. The tree-lined course has a very demanding layout that requires you to be accurate off the tee and avoid a number of well-placed water hazards on some of the holes.

Why don't people take the trouble to let you know that they are alive? It is so much more important. The whole system is wrong. No sooner do I die, than all the flowers I have ever longed for in life pour in.

An increasingly multipolar world requires an entirely different kind of U.S. foreign policy: far from being unilateralist, it necessitates a complex form of power-sharing on both a global and regional basis.

Life is so much easier when I allow myself to be myself and go with the flow. Whatever that looks like on a given day. If I can get quiet enough to truly check-in with myself, I usually end up on the right track.

You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.

I may think I have inalienable rights to be alive and happy, but I don't - life is a blessing.

You can never be too far away from a disaster because there is no disaster free zone in this entire universe

Sometimes our childhood experiences are emotionally intense, which can create strong mental models. These experiences and our assumptions about them are then reinforced in our memory and can continue to drive our behavior as adults.

I think, ultimately, looking back now, acting wasn't satisfying me 100%.

I'm a girl, so I've experienced dismissal because I was a girl or because I write about girls: my book with a guy protagonist is treated as more literary and worthy than my other books with girl protagonists.

The good thing about 'SNL' is that it's the same people every week that you're working with, and we've all become so close and tight because we've worked together so long and so closely together.

Freud was just a novelist.

The great thing about getting older is that you dont lose all the other ages youve been.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.

The last five - six presidents of Haiti have failed miserably. And I don't think it would be an honor for me to say I want to be the next 'president.' I want to be the man by with whom change arrives.

My assumption was that all indigenous architecture would be more fractal. My reasoning was that all indigenous architecture tends to be organized from the bottom up. As it turns out, though, my reasoning was wrong.

I continue to be drawn to clarity and simplicity. 'Less is more' remains my mantra.

I've been working on something, just some jazz, relaxed stuff. It will be standard, just piano and voice. It started out as a fun project for me though, I'm still not sure about releasing it.

All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

The Qataris have cut off support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations.

I don't take investment advice from wealth managers. I have grown several businesses from scratch and amassed many millions from my publishing empire - why would I take advice from someone who has never experienced that?

Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence.

I used to have a road-rage issue.