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

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

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

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

I’m as skeptical as anyone would be about celebrities and causes – and I will dare to say to you that I don’t think of myself as a celebrity per se.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

I just want to be myself.

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.

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.

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

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

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

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

I don’t dabble and spend much mind or time dealing with, I don’t know, people’s perceptions of me. I truly don’t.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

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?

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

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.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

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.

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.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

I like to be in control of how I look and how I feel and how I act.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

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

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

I always say that women should wear whatever makes them feel good about themselves. That’s what I always try to do.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

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.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

If you gonna wear the mohawk, you stick with it. You don’t just be dibby-dabbing. You make up your mind.

Everyone looks at your watch and it represents who you are, your values and your personal style.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

Everybody has their thing they like or don’t like to see. It’s all in your head. That’s why people take their own pictures, because it’s difficult for someone else to capture what you seek.

I wanted to write.

I enjoy wearing pins, and nobody tells me to do it.

Clothing & fashion are kind of my security blanket, almost.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.