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.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn’t want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands. I had posters on my wall. I had Beatles records.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

Our lifestyle was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children.

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.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Learning about climate change triggered my depression in the first place. But it was also what got me out of my depression, because there were things I could do to improve the situation. I don’t have time to be depressed anymore.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

In a democracy, allegations will never improve situations. So, I’m against allegations, but I always welcome criticism.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else’s, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

I like pushing boundaries.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

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

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

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.

After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.