I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

I go to cancer wards, and I tell them guys, ‚I’ve beaten it. You can, too.‘

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

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

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

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.

If I inspire you, pay for it, period.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

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.

Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

I’m concerned that my technical skills have advanced to the point where I can get closer to what I’m aiming for, which is not such a good thing.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

I don’t want followers.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

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

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.