If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

Back in the day, what motivated me was overcoming myself. Now I believe in being a leader. I’ve done it all – I’m good. Now, it’s about setting an example for others to follow. I can’t just talk it – I have to live it.

I was ironing my own clothes when I was 11 years old. My mental strength goes back to those days.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

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

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

I’m not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself – then they get to say ‚See, you did it yourself.‘

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

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.

The conscience can be a strong guide in life if we allow it.

You can’t go backward in life.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.

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 all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

Every man should know, if you’re comfortable and you like it, you should do it. Everyone always worries about what the girls think, what the guys think. If you like it, do it.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I love being busy.

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

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

My life is real.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

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

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

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

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.