I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

Ever since the beginning of rock and roll, there’s been an Axl Rose. And it’s just boring. It’s totally boring to me.

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.

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

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

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.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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 wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

I put together amazing records, whether that’s finding the beat or putting the right hook on there, and picking the right artists on the record. That’s me being an A&R. And I’m making sure that they give me their best.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

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

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

I’m totally myself.

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

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t.

You can say, ‚Well, isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine‘ – well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter, because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I’ve never been interested in that.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

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

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.

Jesus isn’t lettin‘ you off the hook. The Scriptures don’t let you off the hook so easily… When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher‘, ‚Prophet‘, ‚Really nice guy‘ … this is not how Jesus thought of Himself.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

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.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

It’s not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

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

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

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.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

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

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.