Let’s embrace being not normal!

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

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

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

I do have tatoos, and I do wear leather, but there are other sides of me, that my film express.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

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.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

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

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

Forgotten is forgiven.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

I am an introvert; privately I am very shy, and I don’t speak unless I have to.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

All of my music is honest.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

There is no such things as ‚best‘ in the world of individuals.

Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to endulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception.

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.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

I’ve been lucky – all the ads I’ve got, I’ve got to be myself. I haven’t had to act too much or tried too hard to be someone I’m not. I think that’s why people sort of like them. Even the Fastrack ads I did with Genelia.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

If you’re performing music that is not who you are or where you’re at, it is painful. It’s painful for the performer and for the audience.

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage – they’re just not stages you’re allowed to see.

Rather be dead than cool.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!