Bob Marley isn’t my name. I don’t even know my name yet.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

I kinda live where I find myself.

I’m not who people expect me to be. I’m not Henry Kissinger.

My name can’t be that tough to pronounce!

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

I would love to work with Eminem, Dr. Dre. I wish I could have been in the studio with Bob Marley.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Everybody has a purpose.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

I never have really become accustomed to the ‚John.‘ Nobody ever really calls me John… I’ve always been Duke or Marion or John Wayne. It’s a name that goes well together, and it’s like one word – John Wayne.

I hate being called an ‚icon.‘ I just don’t like it. That’s all there is to it.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

I think I have every piece of music Bob Marley ever made.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I’m just more sexually attracted to women. But I’m really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

I don’t really know that much about love, it turns out.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

There are some teams and logos you see, no matter where you are in the world, and you know exactly who they are and what they mean.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

I think that I’ve had a very strange life.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.