I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

I thought one should have the attitude of ‚What do you care what other people think!‘

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I think that if I would talk on a political subject, if I talk about it, it would divide the audience on that issue. That’s not my issue.

I have the space and liberty to create.

I’m kind of claustrophobic… It’s not even like enclosed spaces. It’s like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can’t get out.

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 body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

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

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

When the whole world has their eyes on you, if you say something that doesn’t truly come from your spirit and your soul, or if you wear something that doesn’t come from your spirit and your soul, it’s an injustice to your position. And so, I’m really myself every single day and I do it because I know my fans would want me to.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

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.

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 stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

I’m on the autism spectrum. I don’t usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

There will be days when I walk in an arena and people will cheer and then there might be days when I walk in an arena and people might boo, but it all sounds the same to me because it’s all just noise that lets me know that I’m relevant.

How can a president not be an actor?

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

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.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

I love tattoos. And mine symbolise who I really am. I have a Samurai on my left arm. At a subconscious level, I connect to this warrior and model myself on his discipline, skills and honour. There is also a tribal tattoo and a Chinese symbol of faith. I have seen a lot of people getting tattoos just because it’s a trend.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

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

I enjoy wearing pins, and nobody tells me to do it.

What keeps me up at night? Anxiety. Anxiety, the inability to go to sleep, it’s quite literally that.

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

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

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.