I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

I’m no natural beauty. If I’m gonna have any looks at all, I’m gonna have to create them.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage – they’re just not stages you’re allowed to see.

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

I don’t think people should be encouraged to look like Kate Moss; I think that’s unreasonable. I think the normal human body should be glorified. By the same token, if you need a stick to wash yourself, you’re not healthy.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

The people in my songs are all me.

Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.

A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

You call yourself what you want to call yourself.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

I’m not a person who defends myself very often. I kind of let my actions speak for me.

Cameras aren’t guns. They can’t really hurt you.

Rather be dead than cool.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it’s not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don’t want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it’s not unhealthy, so I’m going to rock with it.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.