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.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

I’m not a bad person.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

Rap was my drug.

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

I love good, loud speakers.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

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

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.