Jewel quotes:

I would always encourage people of any age not to be so quick to follow other people's truths but to search and follow your own moral code and live by your own integrity, and mostly just be brave.

Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous, there's really nothing to lose. There's no wrong you can't make right again, so be kinder to yourself, you know, have fun, take chances. There's no bounds.

I was homeless and I was in San Diego and I started singing in a local coffee shop and people started coming to hear me sing.

It's like a garden: Whatever you water the most will do the best. At some point, you decide whether you'll water your career or your relationship more.

I'm a Gemini and I have a lot of different moods. Sometimes I'm very serious and introspective and pensive, but other times I'm completely goofy and girlie. So, I like my songs to cover all my moods.

I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state - you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you, and so it's heartbreaking to hear people say snarky things.

On my own I generally have very messy hair, wear jeans and sneakers.

Some people want fame, popularity and huge sales. I've always hoped to have a really long career. So I've tried to make each of my creative decisions and business decisions to allow for longevity. As a side effect I got really famous and really big. I didn't realize the two could go together.

I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state, you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you.

Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.

I think family mealtime is really important. There's a lot of research that shows kids are going to do better in school and have more self-esteem if you can all sit down and eat together.

Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous; there's really nothing to lose.

Being part of the natural world reminds me that innocence isn't ever lost completely; we just need to maintain our goodness to regain it.

I think being raised spending so much time outdoors was really important - while you're in it, you might not know, but now I think of the things I was thankful for.

I want my whole life to be a great work of art, not just my art. And that means paying attention to my entire life and trying to make sure my whole life is balanced.

I was turning 20 during my first record. Those decade birthdays always kind of cause me, it seems, to reflect, look back, and then look forward. I just was closing this period of my life where I was living in a car and scrambling my whole life to then signing a six-record deal with Atlantic.

I have a life that I enjoy; I try and value the things that I think are worth valuing and everything else is icing. You know, it is a kick to go down the red carpet in that dress and then you go back home.

I would love to write more children's books. There is such a high standard out there for children's books; there are really amazing writers. It is a fantastic creative outlet and such an amazing teaching tool. The thing I love about kids, too, is it is so imaginative and poetic.

What's great about music is it takes so many kinds of people, including me. Everybody is in a different place.

I enjoy hard work; I love setting goals and achieving them.

I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought, 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry,'

For now I'm just enjoying being a mom. I don't want to be more famous and more rich. I want to be a good mom.

Like every girl, I felt amazing pressure to look like the popular girls, but no one told me the popular girls were all air brushed in magazines.

There's no wrong you can't make right again, so be kinder to yourself; you know, have fun, take chances. Those bounds.

I've been writing lullabies since the beginning. I kind of did it for myself to help myself fall asleep when I really worried, like when I was homeless and I'd fall asleep in my car.

I have hundreds and hundreds of songs waiting to get on albums, but I don't know about the three-month radio tours and if I'll be interested in that. I haven't figured it out, but I will definitely be doing music, whether it is independent or with a major record label.

We must all work together to end youth homelessness in America.

I sort of came out at the dawn of the Internet in the mid-90s and I think it helped break my career. I think I was one of the first artists to really benefit from the grassroots swell that can happen online. I don't know if I would have broken out without it.

You have a different crowd every night, so you should do a different show to suit them. I tailor the show to their mood.

I love being in a band.

I'm trying to be in the moment and really enjoy my pregnancy. I feel really lucky.

If I'm a phenomenon, it makes me feel like I have no purpose.

Most of us don't spend any time knowing ourselves. We just keep reacting.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

Lots of people have gone from public housing to do great things in the world and have a tremendous sense of duty to their fellow man because of it.

Some of my favorite poets had a tremendous sense of whimsy, so it's a writing style I guess I admire.

It's really fun to see young kids trying to find excellence in themselves.

I'm the classic absent-minded professor: I'm very focused on something, and meanwhile, I've left the refrigerator door open for hours.

We can't underestimate the value of silence. We need to create ourselves, need to spend time alone. If you don't, you risk not knowing yourself and not realizing your dreams.

The things you fear are undefeatable, not by their nature, but by your approach.

My intention for my life is to stay centered, and from that intention come my priorities: my son, my family, my job, my self. That then informs what kind of work I can take on. It's a balancing act, but a fun one.

I was thinking that I might fly today. Just to disprove all the things you say... please be careful with me, I'm sensitive, and I'd like to stay that way.

I'm becoming more and more myself with time. I guess that's what grace is. The refinement of your soul through time.

In silence you hear who you are becoming. You create yourself.

Your life becomes what you believe.

I know, you love me and soon you will see, you were meant for me and I was meant for you

I love to be alone with life. I love to study simple things: the light as it filters in a window; the music of a room full of people chatting; a horizon.

You always feel better when you sing. Music touches people's hearts. You know, it doesn't go through your mental capacity, it just moves you and it will let you cry. It's worth it doing a show and when you touch a crowd and move yourself at the same

Writing with privacy is paramount. You must feel free to admit to yourself your deepest, darkest secrets and true feelings.

There is a pretty girl on the face of the magazine and all I see is my dirty hands turning the page.

So what are we given? We're also given, my generation, the disillusionment of our parents.

I was raised in a household where I read Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky and Kant, and I was never taught that my mind was feminine. I'm aware that my body is.

Solutions and technologies exist to provide clean, affordable drinking water anywhere in the world. These solutions will save lives, reduce financial burdens, foster peace, and relieve millions of people from worrying about their next drink of water.

I used to love reading when I was little, and then it became difficult and I didn't understand why. I thought, what a bummer, my passion all drained out of me. So when I found out I had dyslexia, it was like, oh, that's what it was.

I grew up bar-singing and saw all kinds of ways people tried to outrun their emotional pain. It doesn't work. You end up with the original pain, as well as new pain added on top of it from the tactics you used trying to avoid it in the first place. It's best to take a deep breath, bolster yourself, and walk through it.

Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism.

Gather yourself by the sea shore and I will love you there. Assemble yourself with wild things, with songs of the sparrow and sea-foam. Let mad beauty collect itself in your eyes and it will shine - Calling me. For I long for a man with nests of wild things in his hair. A man who will Kiss the Flame.

A good love is delicious, you can't get enough too soon.

Another day, another dollar, another war, another tower Went up where the homeless had their home.

We must all work together to end youth homelessness in America

What I know about street outreach is that it is essential to dealing with the issue of youth homelessness.

You have to realize: OK, I don't know how to solve a political problem, I don't know how to solve the pollution problem... all I know is in my own life, I need to figure out some sense of purpose, I need to figure out how to be happy... and I'm willing.

I'm having a bad day. I am not size six. My legs are not skinny as sticks, and dammit, someone's got to pay. I'm afraid that I can't satisfy myself and that my happiness depends on someone else. I feel weak, so you're gonna take the fall. You're so shallow.

I want love to be simple. I want to trust without thinking. I want to be generous with my affection and patience and love unconditionally. It is easier to love a person with their flaws than to weed through them. I want to love the whole person, not parts; and this is how I want to be loved.

My life has been full of struggles - coming from a troubled home, moving out when I was fifteen, ending up homeless by eighteen. The one thing I always knew was being jaded and bitter was equal to letting life win.

Forgiveness is the needle that knows how to mend.

I love playing big rooms. There's nothing like it. It's a power trip.

I was really inspired while I was pregnant and I wrote a whole album for my baby. I wanted to write a kids album that didn't annoy parents. I used The Beatles 'Rocky Raccoon' as sort of a starting place for my writing.

Self love is a great recurring theme, the headwaters that feed my ability to be the best version of myself in every other aspect of my life. Self worth sets the standard that life meets.

I get bored very easily. I have a voracious appetite and I do not feel alive if I'm repeating something I'm good at. So I'm always looking for new challenges.

Records have never really been my strong suit. I've always been a much better live act. I didn't understand the language of the studio. You sing differently in a studio. The language, the craft - it's just a whole different deal. I avoided the problem on my first record by doing a live album.

I wrote the song 'Angels Standing By'... to try and soothe myself - rock myself to sleep, basically - because I was so scared and stressed.

I have a sneaking suspicion that all religions lead to the same place, a very unified place.

Well in case you failed to notice,In case you failed to see,This is my heart bleeding before you,This is me down on my kneesThese foolish games are tearing me apartYour thoughtless words are breaking my heartYou're breaking my heart

What we believe as human nature in actuality is human habit.

Maybe I could have loved you better. Maybe you should have loved me more. Maybe our hearts were just next in line. Maybe everything breaks sometime.

I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

Sometimes the tide is just out. But it always comes back in again. In times of severe distress, we tend to get tunnel vision and think this feeling will last forever. It will not.

Live your life with love and bravery and you shall lead a life uncommon.

I try to give myself permission to be a work-in-progress and not have everything figured out at once. It's more manageable and takes some of the pressure off of feeling like I have to have everything right all the time.

Once you are successful, there's a very seductive rhythm at work that keeps you wanting to outdo yourself. By the end of 'Spirit' I felt like I didn't want to get into that trap. It almost makes you cartoon-like.

I never found much comfort in overly organized religion of any sort.

Hard times make you bitter or make you more compassionate.

If you write a hit song for Britney Spears, it's worth several million dollars. Just one song! And it might have taken you two hours to do it. It's like mining for gold. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of technique.

I don't see the world unless I see it in ink.

My whole goal is to keep my spirit intact. If that doesn't happen, none of this is worth it.

I'm not a wild and crazy person.

I don't feel like I've changed as much as radio formats have changed.

I guess I'm a Gemini through and through, but I'm mercurial. I get bored doing the same things.

I didn't mean to be a songwriter; I just was writing for fun, you have all day to do it. I was homeless so that's all I had to do.

My second record I used a producer, which was frustrating in a way, because I think a lot of the punky spirit and provocative nature of the lyrics didn't come across - the music was pretty.

There are a lot of things about fame that are not conducive to being curious. It's been important for me to cloister myself off.

I grew up doing live tours and playing in bars, so it was what I love to do.

My husband and I have kept a good balance between the work and the rest. I feel so lucky having a job, and I know so may people who focus too much on work, and their home lives suffer.

If someone is willing to help you understand your own worth when you're vulnerable, that's a very touching thing. It makes you want to help other people.

I don't exist without writing.

In the end only kindness matters.

I make a living with a song, and I feel honored to do something I love and believe in.

No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from.

If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we are all ok. And not to worry because worry is wasteful and useless in times like these.

Don't be made useless or idle with despair. Gather yourself around your strength for light does the darkness most fear.

All things change. Cultivate flexibility rather than perfection.

If you love somebody; You better let it out; Don't hold it back; While you're trying to figure it out; Cause the only real pain a heart can ever know; Is the sorrow of regret; When you don't let your feelings show. So, did you say it, Did you mean it?

You have to be an ally in a difficult time and not turn on yourself with self-shaming thoughts, which makes facing pain intolerable.

Reality is what you believe it to be. It's what you put your thought and energy into, because your hands physically manifest thought. So your world becomes what you feel and what you think.

It's been too many nights of being with to now be suddenly without.

I developed a loyal following. No one knew I was homeless.

Love is a flame neither timid nor tame.

I'd rather see the world from a different angle.

Show me one man who knows his own heart, to him I shall belong.

I have a two-year-old boy. Being his mom feels like I have a present I get to spend the rest of my life opening.

When you're standing in deep water And you're bailing yourself out with a straw And when you're drowning in deep water And you wake up making love to a wall Well it's these little time that help to remind It's nothing without love, love, love

Music has given me a career. But even if it doesn't become yours it teaches you confidence and allows you to express your creativity.

I'd sit on logs like pulpitslisten to the sermonof sparrowsand find god in Simplicity,there amongst the dandelionand thorn

I say to myself, sometimes the tide is just out. But it always comes back in again.

We'll fight, not out of spite For someone must stand up for what's right 'Cause where there's a man who has no voice There ours shall go singing My hands are small I know But they're not yours, they are my own But they're not yours, they are my own I am never broken In the end only kindness matters In the end only kindness matters

I wanted to be an honest writer and show my ugliness as much as I showed my hopes or goodness. And that really sculpted the type of artist I've become.

Sharing lets us feel less isolated and puts us on a path of being connected. At the end of the day, that's what we all want.

everything is temporary if you give it enough time...

We must demand more not from each other, but more from ourselves