I was the only child born to Josephine Perry that survived. Mama had six other children before me, and all had passed very quickly and very young, all succumbing to a combination of illness and disease and the lack of strength to fight off both.

Growing up in the time of Title IX - it was passed when I was 10 - I got a front-row seat to so many great moments in women's sports. Of course I didn't know it at the time.

Whether by my own volition or otherwise, I was given a year-and-a-half break after Dad passed. It was kind of like an elephant in the room, and everyone was giving me space, whether I wanted it or not.

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.

People need to be made conscious of a very simple reality: we have no choice but to share this planet, this small blue sphere floating in the vast reaches of space, with all of our fellow 'passengers.'

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

In my opinion, further consideration of those views will help us find a way out of the current impasse, and reveal to us the kinds of buildings and cities required by the informational society.

There is a very intense culture of secrecy in Britain that hasn't yet been dismantled. What passes for transparency here would serve any secret society well.

After my husband John Lennon passed away, I tried to smile for my health.

If you walk down the street and smile at someone, that will get passed on to the next person. That has the power to change someone's day.

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.

When my dad passed, there's a lot of sadness right below the surface, and I think there will be until the day I die. So, writing sad songs helps it. And when I sing them, it's pure therapy for me.

My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.

I think, after 'Let Her Go,' I wanted to show people that I don't just write really sad love songs about my ex-girlfriend: that there's another side to Passenger as well that's a bit more up-tempo and more inclined to social commentary.

You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it's your own child. And that's what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.

No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks.

The physicality of a real relationship - one that encompasses mind, body and soul - ultimately makes it more fulfilling and powerful than any virtual relationship ever could be.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.

I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll.

I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry.

One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

I went to a party when I was a student and they had a mynah bird up in the bedroom where people put their coats. I was completely captivated - I just sat there all night talking to it. The next day I passed a pet shop and they had a conure - it's a little parakeet - in the window. I bought it, not knowing what it was or how to look after it.