Quotes from Jewel

When we're children we're told love is going to be great: Just fall in love, the rest will take care of itself - and then we fall in love and we realize, Okay, this is actually really, really hard work. This guy doesn't just tell me I'm great every day, you know?

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

I love shows about creating and cooking. Sometimes they're so extraordinary, you end up setting yourself to fail.

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.

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.

Your life becomes what you believe.

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.

Forgiveness is the needle that knows how to mend.

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 think when kids just see well-crafted poetry, it's just obtuse to them. It's hard to relate to.

The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision.

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

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.

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.

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'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 '

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 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.

We cannot always control or avoid what happens to us, but we can control what it does to our spirit.

Informed optimism is different from a willful ignorance that simply wishes not to see the bad in the world. Seeing the truth and choosing every day to see it, letting life break your heart but doing something about it took courage. It was not about hiding your head in the sand but rather digging in, accepting the challenges, and doing the hard work it takes not just to complain about a problem but to be the solution.

Hard wood grows slowly. Be thoughtful about the shape you want to grow into, and be mindful that there is no shortcut to strength and character. Have the patience to allow yourself and your goals to develop.

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

Don't accept the fear that scarcity exists in any corner of your life. There is enough love, enough time, enough healing to go around. Give what you wish to receive.