Struggle and Triumph Quotes

I work hard and fight easy.

Death is not such a bad thing. What would be a bad thing would be living without challenges. Without knowing defeat, we cannot know what victory is. There is no life without death.

Virtue is nothing without the trial of temptation, for there is no conflict without an enemy, no victory without strife.

To me, when you have people trying to put their best foot forward but facing conflict, that's when stories are the most interesting.

My family moved to the Philippines when I was 14. While living there, I learned that my mom grew up very poor. Seeing that kind of abject poverty firsthand during my travels deeply shaped my life. Seeing those living conditions motivated me to want to tell inspiring stories of struggle and triumph.

Making every record is a process full of tough times.

Songwriters such as Alanis Morissette write about the constant balance of contradictions, and that's something I adhere to in my life and work.

Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!

The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.

When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good.

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.