Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

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

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

I couldn’t ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home. That was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not empty-handed.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others‘ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

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.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

No man was ever great by imitation.

All of my music is honest.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

I’ve been careful in love. I’ve been careless in love. And I’ve had adventures I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Always do whatever’s next.

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’m tender on the inside.

All of our problems start in our minds.

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

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I think I have always had a little humor.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.