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

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

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

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 feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

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

Back in the day, I would wear up to 45 pounds of gold. It would take me four hours to get dressed!

I just want to be myself.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

I’ve never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that – of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.

It is always better to be slightly underdressed.

I have always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak Catholic.

I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them – they are individual and stylish.

I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

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

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

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

A lot of the jewelry that I wear are fan gifts because they’re so awesome and they give me great presents.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

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 never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

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.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

I’ve never been an intellectual but I have this look.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don’t know how to do it, and wouldn’t be any good at it if I did, so I’m going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

For me, bomber jackets are smart, but they are also street and have a lot of attitude.

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

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

I am what I am. A fighter.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.