Some of the kids in school used to call my father a fake or a phony. That kind of thing brought on a few fights.

If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that’s not so bad; but New York City?

From my earliest childhood, my attention was specially directed to the subject of acoustics, and specially to the subject of speech, and I was urged by my father to study everything relating to these subjects, as they would have an important bearing upon what was to be my professional work.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

People tend to think that because I’m a performer and I don’t go to a regular high school that I haven’t personally been affected by bullies. But it’s actually quite the contrary.

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

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

Beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won’t like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it’s based on femininity.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

My father was a swim teacher. We used to swim before school, swim after school.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don’t ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It’s like, ‚Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.‘

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Be content to seem what you really are.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was ‚Einstein.‘

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

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.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

I’ve sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don’t need sauce. I know he doesn’t even want you to pour sauce. And I’ve seen customers come in and do that, and I’ve seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I’ve seen him die a little inside.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

No man was ever great by imitation.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

Jesus didn’t die for us so we could pretend to be something we’re not.

Notre Dame is the one school that has a national recruiting base, from Florida to Texas to California.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‚Who do you think you are?‘

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

Whatever I am, it’s natural… I don’t have to pretend to be aggressive, don’t have to show the opposition that I am on the field. Being aggressive comes naturally to me, helps me perform.