I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It’s when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

When I talk to kids, I’m really listening. When I do that, we have a little bit of a bigger connection than me being Kendrick Lamar and you being a student. It’s almost like we’re friends. Because a friend listens.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

I just want to be myself.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Friends accept you the way you are.

When I am talking to people who I feel don’t like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

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

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

You call yourself what you want to call yourself.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you’re always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

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

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

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.

I’m totally myself.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

I don’t know who I touch and who I don’t. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know the reasons I’ve been so well received.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know he likes me.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

If I’m in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person’s side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.