All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

I’d always tried to resist playing the supervirility thing. I liked showing the vulnerability of age.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

There’s no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don’t try to adapt it, make it commercial.

I do get recognized, but I must say Edinburgh is a fantastic city to live if you’re well-known. There is an innate respect for privacy in Edinburgh people, and I also think they’re used to seeing me walking around, so I don’t think I’m a very big deal.

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.

In the past when I was in Hollywood, I was like a dog. I felt humiliated. My English was not good. People would even ask me ‚Jackie Who?‘.

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

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war – for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

I can express myself.

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

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

I don’t want flowers or candy or anything like that. I just want somebody to say, ‚Wow, you’ve done a great job.‘

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.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

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.

I think everybody deserves an equal amount of appreciation whether how old they are, but I mean, I’m cool with the praise. I’m good.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Don’t work for recognition, but do work worthy of recognition.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

I’ve been talked about by a lot better people than the general public.

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

I resent the implication that I’m less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

I like to be creative.

Yeah, I’m an open book.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.