I would wear flamboyant clothes and long hair, and most singers at the time didn't.

I am the innovator. I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock 'n' roll!

A-bop-bop-a-loom-op-a-lop-bop-boom.

Greed has taken the whole universe, and nobody is worried about their soul.

And I'd like to give my love to everybody, and let them know that the grass may look greener on the other side, but believe me, it's just as hard to cut.

I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I've always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband.

A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true.

Elvis may be the King of Rock and Roll, but I am the Queen.

I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.

God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. ... When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.

I think people who don't believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn't make?

Don't tie your success to anything other than what's inside you

I felt a smile on my face. "Thanks." "For what?" "Using my name instead of calling me a thing.

I think I will drink my hemlock now....

You never know who's going to become your friend. Friends are always chance meetings.

No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.

Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

All of a sudden your whole life becomes a public issue. Money, wealth, people, prestige - all of that suddenly comes into play.

Unless we improve our ability to provide a quality education for underprivileged kids, we're not going to really overcome in a massive way our past.

Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.

It isn't that I was born thinking I had to be president. I'm getting a lot of encouragement to run from people across the country. I don't believe this is a rash decision.