The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don’t want it smoothed out.

I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I’m out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

I put cocoa butter all over my face and my iconic belly and my arms and legs. Why live rough? Live smooth.

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

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

You’re in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.

I don’t regret anything.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

I’m a free spirit.

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

If you wished to be loved, love.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

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

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

I’ve always been very liberal when it comes to people thinking for themselves.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things – and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

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

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.

After the first day of practice, there’s not one guy who’s playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it just hurts.

For me, I don’t want to cheat the game by saying, or kind of doing lip service by saying, I want to be the greatest ever. I want to be able to show it.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

Encouragement to all women is – let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

Don’t judge. I used to buy underwear because I didn’t do my laundry.

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.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

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

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

The worst crime is faking it.

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.

I’m tender on the inside.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

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

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

I want to believe that I am improving. This is something that I take really seriously.

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

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.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?