You aren’t normal if you sing to people. You aren’t a normal person. It’s nerve-racking.

I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends.

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.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn’t dream of interrupting you at golf.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

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 don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.

I have been singing randomly, obsessively, obnoxiously for as long as I can remember.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Freedom is relative.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

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 am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

I’m very free-spirited.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

We are all special cases.

If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I’ll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

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

I don’t compare myself to anyone else; I don’t make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that’s okay by me.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

Everyone is different. Everyone has different teams they’ve played on, coaches they’ve played for.

When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing ‚Happy Birthday.‘

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

I think everyone’s inherently snobbish. Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, ‚Well, if everyone likes it it can’t be that good.‘ Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.

The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

A chorus is not easy.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

If he invited you out, he’s got to pay.

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Everybody has their thing they like or don’t like to see. It’s all in your head. That’s why people take their own pictures, because it’s difficult for someone else to capture what you seek.

I don’t have a type. I don’t have a specific kind of human being. It’s just kind of an X-factor of sorts. Everybody I’ve ever dated has been a case-by-case situation.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Aside from singing, I’m also a dancer. I’ve been dancing since I was 8.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.