A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

I feel that I’ve done what I wanted to do, and that makes me feel fairly content.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

I’m not the most attractive fella. I’m not a Billy Dee Williams. Personality is everything.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

I owe my solitude to other people.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

I’m at peace with what I’m doing, I feel good with what I wake up doing and about my lifestyle.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

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.

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.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Prayer doesn’t just change things – it changes us. If we are diligent in seeking God, slowly and surely we become better people.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

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.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

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

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.