Everyone calls me Bruno; they don’t ever call me Peter – that was just my government name.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

Therapy? I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

I always thought of myself as a character actor. I never thought of myself as a leading man.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

I’m totally myself.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

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.

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

My reputation precedes me now.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

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

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

I think people take me as seriously as I want them to. They take me as seriously as I take myself – let’s put it that way.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

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

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.

By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross. It cannot remain its own self except by identifying itself ever more intensely with the essence of the Cross.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

All of my music is honest.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

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

You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

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

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

I don’t really regard myself as a political figure.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

I’m not a sheep.

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

I wanted to write.

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

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.