Confidence came from people. I think I'm very confident in me, as a human being.

I'm not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped.

I'm from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn't really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

Some people will never be able to get their real self, but that's fine, because their fake self is also part of them.

You can't judge people by their cover.

We're all competent in different ways, we've just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.

Obviously you live life for yourself and have your choice to believe what you want to believe in, but I know that the Bible can be used to appreciate life.

Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music.

That's how I always try to start my thoughts. I write them down first, eventually it turns into a poem, and if I feel like composing something to it, then I do that.

Happiness is overrated and money can't justify it.

When I started singing about my life and what I was going through, I felt more confident. It was my own life, I was being myself, I was telling people what was happening.

The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.

Young people don't really study the facts; they watch the skewed MSNBC and get a primarily liberal education.

Democracy sometimes appears paralyzed by those who take advantage of its freedoms in order to abuse them for undemocratic ends.

People have been so supportive of this career for so long, and they are still enjoying the music that I bring to them.

My time in Weimar Berlin was the most elegant in my life. I would have parties for a hundred people - writers, scientists, artists.

People who know me now can't believe I used to be shy, but in some ways I still am.

Horror and supernatural novels give you a lot of what you look for in a crime novel, just with a twist that was very fresh for me as a reader.

I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.

My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

There's the God within and the God without, and you have to attend to the alignment of the two of them.