You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Be content to seem what you really are.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

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 have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

Be as you wish to seem.

I do believe in God. But you won’t find me visiting temples every now and then. I believe in self-realization. Peace of mind matters a lot to me. What’s the point in doing something just for the sake of it? I’d rather do something I like doing as long as I’m being true to myself.

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

No man was ever great by imitation.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

We boil at different degrees.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

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.

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

I bought a gun and chose drugs instead.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

Everyone is different. Everyone has different teams they’ve played on, coaches they’ve played for.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

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

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

I’ve never lived my life in the opinion of others. I believe I’m a good person. I believe I’m a good mom. But that’s for my kids to decide, not for the world.