I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face. You know, I prayed about it a long, long, long, long, long time, because there again, I wouldn’t want to do anything that I felt was going to be offensive to God.

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

Love always ends differently and it always begins differently – especially with me.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.

Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

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?

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

My life is mine to remember.

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It’s like stealing a two-year-old.

You don’t sign up for a divorce when you get married. It’s very painful. But it’s taught me a great deal about myself.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

I’m nobody, who are you?

I walk tall; I got a tall attitude.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.