We are the people our parents warned us about.

I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head – big darkness, soon come – but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

When I think of myself, I think of Toronto. My music would never sound the way it does if it weren’t for Toronto.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

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

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians‘ warning that correlation is not causation.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

When a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

Be extra careful in the work environment with those who like to maintain their position through charm and being political, rather than getting things done. They are very prone to envying and hating those who work hard and get results. They will slander and sabotage you without any warning.

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

You see, rebellion, and the disobedience it causes, keeps us from having the power of God that’s available to us as Christians.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

Beware the hobby that eats.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

Rebellion is what you make of it. When you’ve been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious.

If you ever see The Rock working out in the gym, don’t think you can just go up and disturb his workout and expect him to take a picture. He’s there to work, so kindly just pass the silverback on by or he’ll rip your face off.

I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion – and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

When you’re thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.