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

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Some of the kids in school used to call my father a fake or a phony. That kind of thing brought on a few fights.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

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

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

When I got somethin‘ to say, I’ll say it.

It’s certainly not wrong to want to be a better person. God gave us that desire.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

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.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

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.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

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

Forget the past.

I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I’ve always thought it isn’t that different from everybody else’s.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

I always wanted a family.

I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‚one size fits all‘ standard for happiness.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

I realized the other day that I’ve lived in New York longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

I was raised to be independent.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.