The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

I came here in 1974 to do a play, and then I went to L.A. I really like living in America. I feel more at home here than anywhere else.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

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

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

I’ve lived in a big showplace house, and I never want to live again in a house that overshadows me.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

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’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

No matter what, I always make it home for Christmas. I love to go to my Tennessee Mountain Home and invite all of my nieces and nephews and their spouses and kids and do what we all like to do – eat, laugh, trade presents and just enjoy each other… and sometimes I even dress up like Santa Claus!

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

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

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

I was gutted to leave my boyfriend at home when I started my tour, but taking my pillow was like taking a little bit of him with me.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

I think style is being so comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing. That’s what style is, ‚cause everybody’s got different style.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

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

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

I am what I am. A fighter.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

Sitting idle at home is the most painful experience for a footballer.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

I’m Mickey Mouse. They don’t know who’s inside the suit.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

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

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

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

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.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Nothing can bring a real sense of security into the home except true love.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

Everyone calls me Bruno; they don’t ever call me Peter – that was just my government name.

There’s Madeleine, and then there’s ‚Madeleine Albright‘. And I sometimes kind of think, who is this person? Once you become ‚Madeleine Albright‘ it doesn’t go away.

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

What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of ‚CSI‘ and ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ episodes with pints of ice cream.

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you’re enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

It’s a very strange thing being recognized or looked upon as someone special.

World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

Where thou art, that is home.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

I remember coming to New York in 1974 to do a play here called ‚Equis.‘ And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets, and I thought, ‚I’m home.‘ I felt really at peace here.