Personality is everything in art and poetry.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. You know, that’s not me.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

A lot of guys are able to separate how they act off the court versus how they act on the court.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

I’m different than most people. When I cross the finish line of a big race, I see that people are ecstatic, but I’m thinking about what I’m going to do tomorrow. It’s as if my journey is everlasting, and there is no finish line.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don’t want it smoothed out.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

I’ll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

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

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

We boil at different degrees.

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

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

I thought one should have the attitude of ‚What do you care what other people think!‘

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I don’t like to give advice. I like to give people information because everyone’s life is different, and everyone’s journey is different.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

I’m nobody, who are you?