I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

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.

I’ve had the honor of speaking at many commencements.

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

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 just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

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.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

I have a little bit of PTSD when I hear a big bang or a loud noise or keys – I jump out of my skin.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

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

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

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

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

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

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

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

I get nervous for everything – literally everything.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter.

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.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

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.

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

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

In my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.

I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can’t be all that bad.

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