I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Happiness can exist only in acceptance.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

We are wiser than we know.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

I like to be in control of how I look and how I feel and how I act.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

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

I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.

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

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage – they’re just not stages you’re allowed to see.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

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.

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.