Henry James Quotes

The fact is that this conversation is going on at every level at every age, we're all going, "God, what a jerk I've been," "How could I have married that guy?" or "How could I have done this or that?" With time, this is the gift of being older, that you get to look back and say, "It wasn't all about them."

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

My films are always a reflection of where I am in my life.

I've really taken time to dive into my heart and my emotions a little more. I think, before, I was a little nervous to open up that box and go, 'What's in there,' you know? Now, that's what's made the best music, and that's what I've been able to pull out of parts of myself that I never knew existed.

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

In reviewing my life, in tracing its course, I fill my cell with the pleasure of being what for want of a trifle I failed to be, recapturing, so that I may hurl myself into them as into dark pits, those moments when I strayed through the trap-ridden compartments of a subterranean sky

A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man's age represents a fine cargo of experience and memories.

I have been taking every step toward the future every day through making many paintings and sculptures with my deep emotion hidden in my life.

I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?

If I'd trusted myself and listened to myself all the times that I ignored myself, I would have been fine. But everyone has to learn their lesson, and now I've got it.

As we grow older I always think, why didn't I do more when I was young, why didn't I risk more?

If a man becomes more mature due to certain episodes in his life, it gives him the opportunity to look at life in a much more deep way. I believe the artist and the man work parallel, with the same feelings, the same soul, the same sensitivity.

Recently I read the stories I wrote in my early 20s, to put in a volume. And here is this brittle young woman, writing about marriage as, not the worst thing, but the most boring thing that could happen to a person. Now I think I was wrong. I like to be proven wrong.

I've done a lot of growing up since the age of 16 and I really wanted that to be reflected in my music.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

The first record I spent five years writing and it was an amalgamation of all the things that happened in my life from the time I was fifteen to the time I was twenty.

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty - but only vaguely.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

I felt that with 'In A Perfect World' I was still kind of finding myself - not just as a musician, but also in love and in life.

I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.

I think I've lived a pretty hard life. What I mean by hard is that... I've been kind of reckless with things. I'm a passionate person. I'm a super passionate person. I think there's definitely been sorrow in my life, good and bad. I think it comes through. I hope it comes through in my writing because to me that's what artistry is.

Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.