Whether I’m wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I’m always the same person inside.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

I’m ugly.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.

You should never give up your inner self.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

My goal was never to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

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.

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

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

I wanted to only create a great perfume, not any perfume that would sell, but a great artistic one that the fans would not feel cheated by.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

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

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.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

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

I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ‚em out, I pick the round.

I’m not perfect.

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

I have a deep, deep belief that if I tell you I’m going to crack you with a clean shot to the chin inside one minute of the first round and you will be unconscious, well, then that’s what will happen.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I thank God I’m myself and for the life I’m given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

I love imperfections.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

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

It is my absolute belief that Indians have unlimited talent. I have no doubt about our capabilities.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

I am what I am. A fighter.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

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

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.