In the early days I had a very black-and-white view of everything. I think that's kind of natural for anyone who's just embraced Islam - or any religion - as a convert. It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I'd been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood.

True religion is real living living with all one's soul with all one's goodness and righteousness.

Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.

As I grew up I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

For me living in the closet corroded my ability to have an honest open relationship with my God my loved ones my constituency and myself.

A lot of married people certainly have wonderful relationships with their dogs but when you're single and your dog is the only other living thing in your house it's a really special relationship which I wanted CATHY to have.

Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

You don't repair that relationship by sitting down and talking about trust or making promises. Actually what rebuilds it is living it and doing things differently - and I think that is what is going to make the difference.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing not in demanding or expecting not in hoping even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was nor forward to what it might be but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.