Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

People just overshoot trying to find God. They’re going outside and trying everything. They don’t realize that it’s right inside themselves.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

It’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

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.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to endulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

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.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

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

Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things – he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

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.

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 think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

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

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.