“Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.”

Then you start to realise, ‘Oh, I’m bending a lot,’ and they’re just standing there existing, and I’m bending around them. But you can’t blame them: they don’t realise it; that’s just how they already existed. It’s hard.

I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

I don’t think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.

Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.

I hate that my opinions are gonna be on record… that my opinions of other artists are going to be on record.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.

On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.

I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.

Whenever someone says they like something about my music.

A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t think of it as a job or a career – it was just something that was constant.

When you’re an adult, things mellow out. I think when you’re a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.

I guess you can say I ‘do the Twist.’ I like playful dance moves that aren’t too serious.

Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.

In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.

Before i could stop myself, i punched his arm. Careful, he said in a low voice. They might think were flirting.

Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

I couldn’t stand here, hanging on, when the very thing i held disappeared more with each passing day.

My mother told me once that we can’t survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn’t want to.

Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.

Socrates said, our only knowledge was “To know that nothing could be known;” a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present.

I could get you to smile like that, and without sales tax.

I once tried standing up on my toes to see far out in the distance, but I found that I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.