I’m different from any other designer, businesswise, in that I’ve built this company up and I own it. I never had business hype behind me to promote my image… My image is real… I have never had marketing people telling me what to do.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

Those outside the church expect followers of Christ to live differently, yet today many in church are chasing after the world – not to win them, but to be like them.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

Yeah, I’m an open book.

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

The ideal girl is driven, working on something other than modeling or being a singer.

I’m not trying to be fashionable. Never was!

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

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.

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

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

I’m crazy and I don’t pretend to be anything else.

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.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

Poland should be strong and prosperous and independent and play its proper role as a great nation in the heart of Europe.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

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

Rather be dead than cool.

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

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

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

Jesus didn’t die for us so we could pretend to be something we’re not.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

I don’t believe in endorsing a product that you don’t want to endorse.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

I only act from my heart.

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.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

I’m an old man, and all my life I’ve said that Notre Dame should remain independent because it’s a national school.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

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.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.