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

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

Travel teaches toleration.

I’m not a natural joiner.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

I knew ‚Crenshaw‘ had elevated me and distinguished me.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

If you’ve lost your spirit, even living in the richest country in the world can’t help you become rich.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

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

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

My life is my argument.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

My weak spot is laziness. Oh, I have a lot of weak spots: cookies, croissants.

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.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

I wear the national dress because it is the most natural and the most becoming for an Indian.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

I guess if I’m a product, either you’re chocolate, you’re vanilla or you’re butterscotch. You can’t be all three.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!