Don't be made useless or idle with despair. Gather yourself around your strength for light does the darkness most fear.
JewelI'm becoming more and more myself with time. I guess that's what grace is. The refinement of your soul through time.
JewelI’m somebody who, as a child, had a lot of insecurity about stable housing, where I was going to be living, if I was going to have a roof over my head, all those types of things. And I know the impact it can have on you psychologically and emotionally.
JewelI 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.
JewelMusic has given me a career. But even if it doesn't become yours it teaches you confidence and allows you to express your creativity.
JewelI 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.
JewelI 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.
JewelTo shut down the ability to feel pain means you shut down all emotions, joy included. It makes our hearts feel small, it robs us of our joy, and really keeps us no safer.
JewelFor 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.
JewelI'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.
JewelTelling the truth to yourself and someone you can trust are great ways to help elevate your whole emotional quality.
JewelI wrote the song 'Angels Standing By'... to try and soothe myself - rock myself to sleep, basically - because I was so scared and stressed.
JewelSome 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.
JewelLots 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.
JewelI 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.
JewelI 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.
JewelWell 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 knees These foolish games are tearing me apart Your thoughtless words are breaking my heart You're breaking my heart
JewelSharing 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.
JewelI'm the classic absent-minded professor: I'm very focused on something, and meanwhile, I've left the refrigerator door open for hours.
JewelI 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.
JewelSometimes 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.
JewelYou have to be an ally in a difficult time and not turn on yourself with self-shaming thoughts, which makes facing pain intolerable.
JewelExcuse me, guess I've mistaken you for somebody else, somebody who gave a damn, somebody more like myself.
JewelAmazingly, 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.
JewelLove 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.
JewelI'm always looking for ways that I can work from home with my home studio and stay busy. This is a great way to do it. Having a home studio has made projects like this a lot easier.
JewelI'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.
JewelWe all need to demand the happiness for ourselves we desire. Fight for it. Wrestle it out of the clenched fist of the world you live in
JewelI 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.
JewelI 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.
Jewel