The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‚them‘ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‚us.‘

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

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

I’m not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it’s so that people really know what Bad Bunny’s about.

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

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.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

I have a really close relationship with Mike Bloomberg.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

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

I miss people. I miss going anywhere and meeting a random person and saying ‚Hi‘ and having a conversation about life. I love people.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

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

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

The soul is your innermost being. The presence that you are beyond form. The consciousness that you are beyond form, that is the soul. That is who you are in essence.

It’s very important for Christians to be honest with God, which often, you know, God is much more interested in who you are than who you want to be.

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

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

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

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

All you need to do to be my friend is like me.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

Letters are something from you. It’s a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

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.

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

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don’t do things to shock people. I’m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. So while I’m here, I might as well make the most of it.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.