I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

I’m not going to say I’m cool, because I don’t really feel that. I just don’t care at all, and I guess that’s what people think is cool.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

I always wanted a great love affair: something that feels big and full, really honest, and enough. No moment should feel slight, false, or a little off. For me, it had to be everything.

I’ve seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

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?

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

It’s very important for Christians to be honest with God, which often, you know, God is much more interested in who you are than who you want to be.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

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.

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

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Friends accept you the way you are.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

My life is real.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

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

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Whether I’m wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I’m always the same person inside.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

For me, I don’t want to cheat the game by saying, or kind of doing lip service by saying, I want to be the greatest ever. I want to be able to show it.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

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

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.