I like singer-songwriters, and I find sad songs comforting rather than depressing. It makes you realise you're not alone in the world.

Religion works. I know there's comfort there, a crash pad. It's something to explain the world and tell you there is something bigger than you, and it is going to be alright in the end. It works because it's comforting.

The perfect ham and cheese sandwich is all about focusing on quality ingredients and about simple techniques. You start with great bread, a well-cured ham and a sharp local cheese, and the rest is easy. A little butter in a pan and a little patience - in the end you'll have a sandwich that is at once comforting and delicious.

I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay.

Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself, the most comforting words of all; this, too, shall pass.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

Years ago, during a John Grisham phase, I tried to pinpoint exactly why I found Grisham's often predictable legal thrillers quite so comforting. The best answer I could come up with was the frequency with which Grisham tells us that his lead characters are sipping coffee. When it comes to food and drink, predictability can console.

Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.

I can look at the future with anticipation. And it's comforting to know that someday, as Christians, we'll be able to look back and have a little more clarity on why certain things in life happened.

Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food. They are very bite-sized and personal.

I find it almost comforting to count calories, because it makes me conscious of what I'm eating. But on Super Bowl Sunday, I thought, 'Surrender to it. It's nacho time.' Then I ate nothing but Doritos all day.

There's something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

The things I do, I do from the heart and out of love and respect for our planet and all living things. And I draw my courage from my love for justice and truth, and I calm my fears by comforting those who are more scared than me. And I try to do my best to make the world a better place, one small action at a time, as good as I can.

At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.

I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry - and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.

Wishful thinking is comforting, but it changes nothing.

Leaving my father behind-with all of his baggage-was like giving up an old teddy bear. You know it's just an object, incapable of comforting you with its tattered fur and missing button eye, but it's something you cling to, even though you know it can't give anything back.

The comforting thing about feeling lonely is that every thing that has ever existed also knows what loneliness feels like too.

"Depression from loneliness there is something lulling and comforting in her in the feeling of romance, in the emptiness of feelings. Reality seems endless.

We often fall short on comforting ourselves. Be gentle with yourself.

I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street...with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water, chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next-door neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

There was also something about the smell of bookshops that was strangely comforting to her. She wondered if it was the scent of ink and paper, or the perfume of binding, string, and glue. Maybe it was the scent of knowledge. Information. Thoughts and ideas. Poetry and love. All of it bound into one perfect, calm place.

"Every comforting word is a command from a man of action...

I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call "The Physics of The Quest" - a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared ? most of all ? to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe.