I was told so many times when I was a kid, 'I can't be friends with you, you're too intense, you're too sad all the time.' I really thought that when I made the first album that everyone would understand me, all the people who weren't my friends would become my friends.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

I loved it. I just thought I wanted to stay in college forever. I came to New York all by myself; I didn't have any friends there. But it was fine. I felt comfortable. I started thinking, 'Maybe graduate school?' I was really cool with people who were smart, who knew stuff. It's very romantic and stimulating.

My first wife was a brunette, and Barbi Benton, my major romantic relationship of the early 1970s, was a brunette. But since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonds.

When I was younger, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I told a lot of lies in school. I told my friends once that I was playing John Travolta's daughter in a movie. I also told people that I had this romantic affair with Jonathan Taylor Thomas over a summer.

It's easier to write from my own life, and it's also more fun. I always write about relationships, for instance, whether they're romantic relationships, friendships, encounters... there's always a lesson to be learned from them.

The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.

Couples without kids have each other, their friends, families, and Siri to talk to. It's not like they're quarantining themselves in an underground bunker, never to take a romantic stroll on the beach or attend a Morrissey concert ever again. They're just using birth control.

I am a hopeless romantic and I love to spoil my girlfriends.

I think sometimes in the focus on deep friendships and on romantic relationships, we can lose sight of how important the small connections we make are with strangers and with people that we may encounter for just a few seconds or a few minutes, whether it's the barista at our coffee shop or the stranger next to us on the subway.

I used to try to draw my girlfriends. I think one of the most romantic things that anybody can do is draw a portrait of the person you love.

My friendships and relationships in the conservative world are not predicated on political correctness and enforced conformity of thought. They are based, instead, on mutual respect, honesty and understanding - concepts many modern liberals should consider revisiting.

Here in Ohio, the hardcore scene is a big thing, so some of our good friends are in hardcore bands. So we've had to figure out how the heck we get these people to respect us.

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.

I have such a profound respect for what they do day in and day out. This USO tour is especially meaningful because of the friends I have met and I am honored to be apart of it.

The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.

I was raised Jewish, my wife was raised Catholic. Though we respect each other's heritage, and while many of our friends are deeply religious, we have chosen to focus on our similarities, not our differences. We teach our children compassion, charity, honesty and the benefits of hard work.

I used to get nervous, you know if my parents would come watch. And then I would get nervous if my friends came and watched. Today it's not a problem anymore actually, because now I enjoy it. I see that they, you know, respect me immensely, and I try to put on a good show and show that I can still play very good tennis.

I am who I am. That's why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don't change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I'm myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

The Iranians have shot down drones. They tried to destroy the Saudi oil fields. They tried to storm our embassy. So, when my Democratic friends say we need appeasement, well appeasement hasn't worked. And I think that we've learned, with respect to Iran, that weakness invites the wolves.

A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters - well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality - but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage.

I remember I read this harsh review about my show, and one of my friends told me that this was the exact same stuff people said about Madonna. And it's like, she didn't care. Madonna just came out and was herself. I respect that a lot.

We all respect sincerity in our friends and acquaintances, but Hollywood is willing to pay for it.

I want to say a little something that's long overdue, the disrespect to women has got to be through. To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends, I wanna offer my love and respect till the end.