I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

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

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

I don’t think I’m such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

My brother had written ‚Ocean Eyes,‘ and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way – if you can’t dance to a song, it’s not a song.

I think I have a certain respect for people, you know. And I guess a lot of times I expect that respect to go both ways.

It’s the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

The thing I always say to people is this: ‚If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.‘

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

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.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

Go on thinking that you don’t need to be read and you’ll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won’t feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

When people say ‚marriage‘ to me… It’s always a means to an end. Everyone’s so in a rush to define the relationship.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

I don’t regret anything.

I’m perpetually lonely.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

I don’t have time to be lonely. And I get fearful of relationships because I feel guilty about wanting someone to be completely faithful and loyal, when I can’t even give them 10 percent of the attention that they need. It’s just the reality of my time, my life, my schedule.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.