Quotes by Daniel Smith

“Bob Dylan started out as a folk rip-off but he quickly ran with complex influences and it ended up to be his own sound.”

“There are many selfish people who are extremely original, then they take those pure ideas and use them to raise themselves up, that is an insincere move.”

“I always say the connection is in the blood and it is true, but I believe it is mostly in the Spirit and in the relationships we have.”

“I guess my experience with God had to be without external influences because I certainly wasnt listening to anyone but my selfish self.”

“I believe that an artist working for and representing the Kingdom of God should do the best of their ability to show and prove the depth, life, newness, creativity, truth and excitement of their Heavenly Father through the work that is set before them.”

“If our form of expression comes out of blatant robbery then we as the messenger are open for justified criticism of our message.”

“Up till now I wrote the songs on my acoustic guitar alone with the Lord. Then I would take the song and share it with my family and then we all would figure out instrumentation together.”

“In 1993 the Lord re-arrested my heart and fell in love with him all over again. I finally understood that who I am is his son.”

“I get excited about what the Holy Spirit is doing now through all the people he is refining and raising up all over this planet. I love connections and relationship and networking but it must be led by the Spirit.”

“Its very, very important symbolically to have Chicago become smoke free because its the leader in the Midwest and it will have a trickle down effect. This is part of a national trend this is just now starting in the Midwest.”

There is no such thing as a good decision and a bad decision. There are only decisions. Make them, fuck up, enjoy, repeat.

Freedom is anxietys petri dish. If routine blunts anxiety, freedom incubates it. Freedom says, Even if you dont want to make choices, you have to, and you can never be sure you have chosen correctly. Freedom says, Even not to choose is to choose. Freedom says, So long as you are aware of your freedom, you are going to experience the discomfort that freedom brings. Freedom says, Youre on your own. Deal with it.

First, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That’s often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of “monkey mind.” A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth—to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area?

This is the trouble with origin hunting. There are so many origins.

But a child is a sensitive instrument. You can hide the factual truth from a child, but you cant blanket influence. Your agitation will out, and over time it will mod your childs temperament as surely as water wear at rock.

The problem of anxiety isnt that the organism responds to threats by near-instantly powering up. Thats clearly a good thing, species-survival-wise. Its that sometimes the organism starts seeing threats too readily.

My mother took the measure of what could be built with the material shed been given, and she built it.

Equally as therapeutic was the fact that disaster did not come.

If youre afraid of heights, lean over a railing. If youre afraid of germs, lick a floor. But what do you do if your greatest fear is of being afraid?

I felt so skinless at times! Things hit me so hard!