Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

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

Smiles are the language of love.

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

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.

I’m on the autism spectrum. I don’t usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.

Love is trembling happiness.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

I do have a few little tattoos, but they were mostly done to cover scars because I’m so fair.

Football is a sad game.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

For me, I don’t want to cheat the game by saying, or kind of doing lip service by saying, I want to be the greatest ever. I want to be able to show it.

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 you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, when you’re deeply and madly in love with a woman and you know she’s not feeling you the same way, and you don’t know why.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

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

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

I’m not a person who defends myself very often. I kind of let my actions speak for me.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

When Clark Gable died, I cried for 2 days straight. I couldn’t eat or sleep.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

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.‘

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

I think it’s an Irish thing. We don’t really care. We say it as we mean it, and you have to deal with it. The truth is the truth.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

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.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

My life is real.