The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

I don’t regret anything.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Many people feel so pressured by the expectations of others that it causes them to be frustrated, miserable and confused about what they should do. But there is a way to live a simple, joy-filled, peaceful life, and the key is learning how to be led by the Holy Spirit, not the traditions or expectations of man.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

I loved being Maleficent. I was quite sad to put my staff down and put my horns away because somehow, she just lives in a different world.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

I can’t keep somebody from being a star, and I can’t make somebody a star, and nobody can.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat – no matter who killed the meat for him.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.