I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting.

My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.

In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.

So why sign your name in blood for more? It seemed like a sensible arrangement for me. I didn't sell large numbers of records and the record company paid advances they rarely recouped.

I feel like I'm stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it's always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.

I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment.

If you feel driven and compelled to make your work and to be fiercely original and have something unique to say, in a compelling way, then chances are the helpers will be there for you the doors will open some, the ice will crack.

Now I'm having to live with sales of around 50,000 per album - but I'm pretty content with my place in the general scheme of things, even if it's meant I don't drive a fancy car and can't afford grand vacations.

I don't know to what extent someone can BECOME an artist - you either are or you aren't - and if you are you'll HAVE to make your way to some kind of sickly light, no matter how terrible the soil you were seeded in your nature will out somehow.

I've been getting pretty focused about that recently, and even considered doing a masters degree to polish up the craft. I've been pretty lucky in that I seem to have found people online who are willing to constructively tear it apart for me, and indicate its weaknesses.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I've always felt about that decision - it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting mirrors that fame engenders.

I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting.

I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.

Trust the tale, not the teller.

There's nothing like doing something wrong to learn how it might be done better.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

Oh yeah - for sure - hardly a week doesn't go by when I don't hear something wonderful that someone has made in some low-budget situation, primarily with a view to selling a few hundred copies at their concerts.

The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.

We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the domain of economics at socialism; in the domain of what is today called religion, at atheism.

As for the Devil - that is somebody our religion tried to do without for a long time.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

There is one thing higher than Royalty: and that is religion, which causes us to leave the world, and seek God.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

I don't have a religion. I believe in a God. I don't know what it looks like but it's MY god. My own interpretation of the supernatural.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Toleration is the best religion.

Jesus claimed He had the power to raise himself from the dead and His followers would be raised from the dead. That's a unique claim in the literature of religion.

From the long range point of view, I do not know of anything we can do more important than to make some contribution to the preservation of religion as a vital force in America.

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!

The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.

In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal.

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.

I found a religion that blended scientific reason with spiritual reality in a unifying faith far removed from the headlines of violence, destruction and terrorism.

I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.

Religion has become so many different things. Religion is an economic thing for some people. Religion is a gun.

Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.

I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.