I do have a few little tattoos, but they were mostly done to cover scars because I’m so fair.

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.

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.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

I don’t want followers.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

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?

My whole life is a theater piece.

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.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

I can express myself.

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

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

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.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

My life is my argument.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

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

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

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

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

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you’re always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

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

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

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

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

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

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

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.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

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

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

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

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.

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.

I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

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

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.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

I wanted to write.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

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.

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.