Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.

I always was a Christian… whatsoever a man thinks in his heart is who he is.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

I am confident my Hindutva face will be an asset when dealing with foreign affairs with other nations.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

The French have got taste.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

Sometimes I don’t use the words ‚will‘ and ‚want‘ in the right way. The German word ‚will‘ is the English word ‚want,‘ so that’s a little bit of the problem.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

Radio in England is nonexistent. It’s very bad English use of a media system, typically English use.

Paris is always a good idea.

Ever since I first came here in 1963 to fight Henry Cooper, I have loved the people of England.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

I don’t look at myself as a commodity, but I’m sure a lot of people have.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

There are some teams and logos you see, no matter where you are in the world, and you know exactly who they are and what they mean.

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

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there’s a good English phrase for it – cold war.

I feel Anglo-American.

Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

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.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.