Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so not negative but antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around.

Rock n' roll as a genre is different from pop and hip hop: it is about bands and that for me suggests brotherhood family friendship and community.

I've got many close friends but there's an awful lot about friendship that is not demonstrative in my case.

I would be willing to do almost anything to make Art happy. I care about our friendship. The only thing I won't do is change the essence of my work.

I'm calling my book series the 'with God series.' And this next 'with God' book is Friendship with God which comes out in November. This books challenges us to bring about the end of 'better' on this planet.

Meg Ryan is a beautiful and courageous woman. I grieve the loss of her companionship but I've not lost the friendship. We talk all the time and that was what our connection was about. She has a wonderful mind and we just like a chat.

I've got some great guy friends. They can start out as crushes. But when you realize something isn't going to happen you make a choice whether or not the friendship is worth it. And it usually is. Then you can laugh about the fact that you used to have a crush on him or he had one on you.

A lot of the powerful religious leaders from Jesus to Buddha to Tibetan monks they're really talking about the same things: love and acceptable and the value of friendship and respecting yourself so you can respect others.

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings their weakness. It's also about mutual help not about exploitation.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere whether it is holding out a hand of friendship or making clear that you disapprove of something is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being so the goal is to always establish common ground.

My parents and librarians along the way taught me about the space between words about the margins where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed in the friendliest way.

The friend is the man who knows all about you and still likes you.

What is our freedom fight about? Is it about the liberation of children or just having sex with them?

To me music has to be about freedom. It's the most important thing in my life.

I think that we could be more careful about what we're saying to young women in terms of their expectations. It's unrealistic to expect people to always be in designer clothes. Girls growing up deserve more freedom in how they look and how they feel about how they look.