Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

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

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

T-shirts for ten dollars are even more fashion today than expensive fashion.

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.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

The moment someone asks you to do something you don’t have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

There are always people always asking you for something. But I feel like I have a foundation. I have a supporting cast where it doesn’t bother me too much.

I’ve worn dresses from all different price ranges, and the thing that couture dresses have in common is that the fit is amazing.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

I have never felt more confident in myself, more clear on who I am as a woman. But I am constantly thinking about my own health and making sure that I’m eating right and getting exercise and watching the aches and pains. I want to be this really fly 80-90-year old.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

Hmm, on my downtime, I take a shower or listen to the Bible on tape.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.

I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.

I’m an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Never get out of bed before noon.

I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.

When you’re just like everybody else, you’ve nothing to offer other than your conformity.

I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong. I mean you can’t remember everything all the time, and especially if you’re having hard times personally, things going on that you – you know, and then people make it worse. And that makes you feel worse.

A person standing in front of an audience without enthusiasm for his subject and his actions is disconnected from his spirit.

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

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.

When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla – a rebel.

If I forget to pray, I can’t get through the day without snapping at people.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

I don’t care if you get up in the morning and don’t wash, don’t put any make-up on, don’t do your hair, even, but you have to have clothes if you want to look different.

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I’d go back to Virginia.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

One thing that I tell people all the time is, ‚I’m not going to answer a call from you after nine o’clock at night or before nine o’clock in the morning unless it’s an emergency.‘

Moderation is the key so I work certain amount of time and then I take a certain amount of time off.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. It means to think of something over and over.

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

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

I don’t care how busy I am – I will always make time for what’s most important to me.

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.

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.

Fashion breaks my heart.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

I love Dolce & Gabbana. I love Versace. I love the crazy, more eccentric stuff.

I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they now do.