The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

I’ll never make it, it will never happen, because they’re never going to hear me ‚cause they’re screaming all the time.

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

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.

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

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.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

I really have no interest in myself.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Never find fault with the absent.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

On TV the people can see it. On radio you’ve got to create it.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

Be not a slave of words.

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

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

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.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.