If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

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

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I’m quite shy.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

I wouldn’t say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

We’re one of the only animals in the world that don’t really think of ourselves as animals, but we are animals, and we must respect our fellow animals.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

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.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

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.

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

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

I don’t think a lot of people know personally who I am.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

I know I’m a good professional, I know that no one’s harder on me than myself and that’s never going to change, under any circumstances.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

Don’t make me into this airy-fairy, moralist, idealist because I’m not.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don’t know who or what, maybe myself.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

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

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.