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

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

I think I have something tonight that’s not quite correct for evening wear. Blue suede shoes.

I thought one should have the attitude of ‚What do you care what other people think!‘

The stylish kids on the street, they’re the ones that set the trends. The designers see what they’re doing and go and design their line and sell it back to the same kids, and it’s like, why not go directly to the source?

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 never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

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.

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.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘

Rather be dead than cool.

The fashion I’ve acquired over the years is so sacred to me – from costumes to couture, high fashion to punk wear I’ve collected from my secret international hot spots. I keep everything in an enormous archive in Hollywood.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

All of my music is honest.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

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.

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

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I think style is being so comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing. That’s what style is, ‚cause everybody’s got different style.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

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

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

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

I’m a free spirit.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they now do.

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

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike 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.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

My fans kept asking where they could get clothes like Destiny’s Child’s, so it was only natural for us to do a clothing line.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

When I was with Andy Warhol, I thought, ‚God, his wig looks cheaper than mine!‘

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

There was a moment when designers draped in ermine would be reading Proust, or pretending to.

I wear the national dress because it is the most natural and the most becoming for an Indian.

I’m big on what’s in good taste.

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

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.

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

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

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I write all of my own speeches.

I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.

There have been several Duchesses of Westminster but there is only one Chanel!

A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.

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

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 love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

I am an introvert; privately I am very shy, and I don’t speak unless I have to.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.