In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

I love ripped jeans! They are flattering. I’m very petite, so I think they make my butt look lovely.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Everything has changed, and nothing has changed more than the world of fashion.

My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady’s head-dress.

I cap myself when I shop; I don’t like to spend extravagant amounts on clothes. But, I do get lent clothes for events, it’s scary to wear something so expensive, but I feel really pampered.

Fashion is merely an opinion. And I’ve got a lot of opinions.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

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

My momma didn’t clean up floors so I could be a thug… so I could wear my pants down.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

More than anything, I like a jacket. You can do anything with a great jacket, the bigger the better. You can have any silhouette underneath. It gives you an attitude. It makes a gown look cool.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

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

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

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.

I like sweaters. I have a sweater obsession, I guess.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. You know, that’s not me.

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.

Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

I’m a really artistic person, and so, with the live stuff, there’s a lot that I think is really cool. Beyonce and Rihanna have all these dancers. So with the live costumes and video costumes, I’d really like to have my vision. The way that I want people to dress is very specific. I love fashion.

When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla – a rebel.

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

My fans kept asking where they could get clothes like Destiny’s Child’s, so it was only natural for us to do a clothing line.

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

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

It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it – though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, ‚I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.‘

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.

I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don’t know how to do it, and wouldn’t be any good at it if I did, so I’m going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.

If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.

Fresh sneakers are important on a man. It’s like a new pair of boxers or a new pair of socks.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

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.

When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

I love Dolce & Gabbana. I love Versace. I love the crazy, more eccentric stuff.

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.