The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.

My body is like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t think about it, I just have it.

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

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

Happiness can exist only in acceptance.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

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

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

You have to be someone.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

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

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

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 tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

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

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

I always wanted to be loved.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

Some people would like me to be round again.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

I want the world to see my body.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

The dreams and passions stored within hearts are powerful keys which can unlock a wealth of potential.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough. I’m enough. My kids are enough.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

No man was ever great by imitation.