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.

I’m not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.

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

Anger cannot be dishonest.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God’s divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego’s insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you.

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.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

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.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

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.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

My goal was never to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.

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

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

This healthy eating stuff, it’s here to stay, and we now have everything we need to seize the opportunity and give all our kids the healthy futures they so richly deserve.

I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish before I get to kids. Whenever the time is right, I’ll just know. If I had a girl, she’d probably be really rebellious. She would be like a bundle of karma. I would love to bring them up in Barbados.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

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

I was never a boy magnet at school. There was always the girl all the guys liked and wanted to date, but it was never me.

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.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

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.

His father is governor of Media, and though he has the greatest command given him of all the rest of my generals, he still covetously desires more, and my being without issue spurs him on to this wicked design. But Philotas takes wrong measures.

Except for the title ‚father,‘ there is no title, including ‚vice president,‘ that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.

When I’m around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you’re supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

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

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

First grade is very cheap. It’s the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don’t do it right.

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

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

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

‚Speed‘ and ‚Point Break‘ were a lot of running and jumping, and then ‚The Matrix Trilogy‘ had a lot of fights and wire work and green screen elements.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Yeah, I’m an open book.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

I love that I can talk to my fans through Twitter, to cut out the middle man. Because I’ve done interviews where my words have gotten twisted, so it’s nice to be able to have things coming straight from me.

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

Integrity means that you are the same in public as you are in private.

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.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.

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.