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

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

History, a distillation of rumour.

A person standing in front of an audience without enthusiasm for his subject and his actions is disconnected from his spirit.

Hoover was a patriot in his heart, but he definitely exceeded his power.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.

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

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

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

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

I don’t want followers.

I have a heart of gold, but I’m really a marshmallow in my heart.

I’m crepuscular.

As abhorrent as some of this content can be, I do think that it gets down to this principle of giving people a voice.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

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.

The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.

I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.

It’s not about charisma and personality, it’s about results and products and those very bedrock things that are why people at Apple and outside of Apple are getting more excited about the company and what Apple stands for and what its potential is to contribute to the industry.

I’m not the most patient of people.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.

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

I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.