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

It’s really fun to be on stage in front of people.

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.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

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.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it – though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, ‚I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.‘

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

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.

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

I go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I’m saying, and I track it.

What keeps me up at night? Anxiety. Anxiety, the inability to go to sleep, it’s quite literally that.

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

I just want to be myself.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I’m teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.

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

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

I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me – to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That’s normally how I perform. That’s how I am.

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.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

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

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

If you consider the definition of authenticity, it’s saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

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!

So when I speak in front of thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don’t really get nervous because I know what I want to say and I know what message I want to give.

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

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.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

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.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual – which nothing is more actual than stand-up – it’s a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time – we miss that.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

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

When Caroline Kennedy managed to say ‚you know‘ more than 200 times in an interview with the New York ‚Daily News,‘ and on 130 occasions while talking to ‚The New York Times‘ during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

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.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.