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

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

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

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

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 learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

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.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

I’m not trying to be fashionable. Never was!

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

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

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

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.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

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.

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.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

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.

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 never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

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.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

The best fashion advice I’d say would be just to do what makes you comfortable and what makes you feel cute, and that’s how you’re gonna look your best ‚cause when you feel your best, everybody else can feel it, too.

If you consider the definition of authenticity, it’s saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

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.

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.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

Jesus didn’t die for us so we could pretend to be something we’re not.

Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

Be as you wish to seem.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

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

I don’t feel very comfortable defending my fashion except to say that people don’t have to buy it. You do have to consume. You have to live. If you’ve got the money to be able to afford it, then it’s really good to buy something from me, but don’t buy too much.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

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

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

I’ve been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don’t need to write a book for adults.

I can express myself.

Be content to seem what you really are.

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.

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.