Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

I’m a free spirit.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

Everyone calls me Bruno; they don’t ever call me Peter – that was just my government name.

In my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

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.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

I’m not a politician. And I don’t want to be.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

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

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

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.

I wanted to write.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

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.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

If I’m in a bad mood, or if I’m uncomfortable, it’s probably what I’m wearing that’s making me feel that way.

In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

Personally, I don’t wear fur.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

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

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.

If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.

I’ve never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that – of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.