I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

Everybody has a purpose.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

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.

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne – to beat her down, hide her.

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

At 155, I will be the same animal, an even better animal.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

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.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I’m most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page… sunrise over the desert and masses of… a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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.

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

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

I now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

What nourishes me also destroys me.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

I don’t write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

Never complain. Never explain.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.