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.

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.

If you've got great parents, once you grow up and have to live by yourself, you're going to create some fake self as you get comfortable wherever you are.

The April sun, weak but determined, shone through a castle window and from there squeezed itself through a small hole in the wall and placed one golden finger on the little mouse.

Fear of change was a weakness

I'm not married, nor do I want to be. I'm the loving kind but not the marrying kind, though I am romantic.

Religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things.

Live today for what is going to matter 10 billion years from today.

The world is two thirds spaghetti and meatballs, one third syphilitic chancre.

Courage is how bad you want it.

Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body.

The true badge of courage is overcoming the fear of men.

Oh! was ever woman so blessed as I am.