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 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.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

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

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.‘

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

I think that every artist – or anybody that’s in business – could benefit from a direct-to-consumer strategy, so I think that that applies to us as artists and content creators, too.

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.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Rather be dead than cool.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

I never thought I’d land in pictures with a face like mine.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

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

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

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

If you gonna wear the mohawk, you stick with it. You don’t just be dibby-dabbing. You make up your mind.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

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

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.

I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

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 think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

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

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.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

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

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

If I can get my dress on, my weight is under control.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

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.‘

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

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 think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

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.

It’s simple, if it jiggles, it’s fat.

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

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.