Richard MacDonald Quotes

But I started it when I was going through a transitional time in my life. At the end of it, it really sort of symbolized it. I had made room to change, and room to grow. I recorded it in a little room.

Music saved my life. The voice you hear, the soul, the pain, is that of a person who deeply, deeply, deeply appreciates the opportunity they've been given.

The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It's when it begins

At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth.

Sometimes I do feel like I write the same story again and again. And for me, I am always looking for a place with a kind of redemption.

Women should know that they don't have to hang on to an old dream that has stopped nurturing them - that there is always time to start a new dream.

I'm from a very violent city. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana, and it's good to see me be able to express my art, have a good opportunity for my life, make history and say something, without being violent.

I can't help seeing 'Waste Land' as the third in a triptych with my earlier films 'Devil's Playground' and 'Blindsight,' and not least in the awe and gratitude I feel for the group of people who were courageous enough to share their stories with us - and to live lives so rich in inspiration for us all.

I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of. It was indeed the turning point of my life.

I was a young kid; I did a little time in the Billerica House of Correction, and it basically turned my life around because I said, 'Oh, I'll never be locked up again. They're not taking away my privacy.' So I flipped a coin: heads - Miami, tails -California.

You don't have to fight for your life anymore. You're starting a new one.

Being in your forties - any woman who isn't there yet, I just have to say to you: Euphoria is coming to you.

I feel like I have a new life and I'm going to take full advantage of it.

I asked myself, 'What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to be like everyone else or are you going to do what's right?' I just made a decision. I said, 'It's time to grow up. It's time to start living for the Lord, do things the right way.' I accepted the Lord, and it changed my life.

A lot of people would have loved me to keep singing... You come to a point where you have sung, more or less... your whole repertoire and you want to get down to the job of living.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Art led the way for me to recover. He got out of prison before me and started traveling all over the world before I did. He showed me by example that it could be done, and I'll always love him for that.

My whole story is just about me having a second chance.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

There were always moments where I'd say, 'What else can I do with my life?' But when I was 30 years old and discovered I could write - I wrote 'Black Cloud' in six weeks - it opened up a whole new world for me.

In life, you always have a second chance.

It is possible to have second chances. When I thought everything was lost, when I reached bottom and things didn't go my way, the universe gave me a second chance.

When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.

I'm starting a new chapter in my [[life], and you have no idea how much that means.