When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

I’m a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it’s a process I’ve been doing since I was younger.

I am just one human being.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

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

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

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

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

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

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

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

Men must know their limitations.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

I hate to be smart.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We’re almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it’s inviting disaster.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

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.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

He who angers you conquers you.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

I just want to be myself.