If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

I never wanted to perform and never proclaimed myself to be a performer.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

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

I love stories about women.

The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Be content to seem what you really are.

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

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

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

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

I do believe in God. But you won’t find me visiting temples every now and then. I believe in self-realization. Peace of mind matters a lot to me. What’s the point in doing something just for the sake of it? I’d rather do something I like doing as long as I’m being true to myself.

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

Live truth instead of professing it.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

I’ve sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don’t need sauce. I know he doesn’t even want you to pour sauce. And I’ve seen customers come in and do that, and I’ve seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I’ve seen him die a little inside.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

In my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

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

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

I don’t believe in endorsing a product that you don’t want to endorse.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

This was life in the ’30s. This is the way it was with children in the South. I tried to make it general, the kind of things that might happen to any child.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.