I felt frustrated by the limitations of rock and the lifestyle of touring around on a bus and playing the same songs over and over. So I went back to school to study music, and one of the things I got into was the Italian opera composer Puccini.

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

I think I'm a good dad. It's hard. Ultimately, it's our kids that have the final word. So we'll have to ask them.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.

When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals.

Anyone working for a big company might be skeptical that a large business, or even a strictly online business, can form the same kind of friendly, loyal relationship with customers as a local retailer. I'm saying it's already been done because I lived it.

I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as 'I'm cool, look at how many e-mails I get.' That perception doesn't scare me, because I know who I am.

People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, 'Soave,' and say, 'Oh, O.K., cool.'

People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you're going to lose. You're just going to. Even if you get the money, you're not going to be happy.

You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you're an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party... My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.

The world has changed - through technology, through wine-making techniques, the quality of wine is greater than it's ever been. Whereas ten, fifteen years ago it was very easy to find lots of bad wine, it's kind of hard now. The technology, the science - it's like, are you kidding? We're in the golden years of wine!

As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there's always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.

Brands mature over time, like a marriage. The bond you feel with your spouse is different than when you first met each other. Excitement and discovery are replaced by comfort and depth.

People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.

My dad is like a cactus - introverted and tough. I'm a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He's my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.

I know I could be the host of 'SportsCenter' in two years if I changed my show today to sports.

Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk.

I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness.

Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.

Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.

I wasn't handed college or graduate school or anything else on a silver platter. I had to work very hard, but I did it because I wanted to. That's the real key to happiness. I think unhappy people are those who feel that circumstances are forcing them into a pattern. Happy people are not slaves to the system.

Everything's a real passion to me - my children, my family, my work, travel. I don't play tennis, I don't play music, but I have a great time.

As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I want to bring that with me and go back in time.

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.

I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.

Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk.

Their memory's like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can't remember Tell the things you can't forget that History puts a saint in every dream.

Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it, the studio's gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.

If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment.

I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter.

Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it.

My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

Mostly, I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

The one happiness is to shut one's door upon a little room, with a table before one, and to create; to create life in that isolation from life.

To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.