“I have met a few people, who are so respected in the fashion industry and all around the world, and are still very humble. People who have it all but act like they only just started, it’s beautiful. This is what I want to be.”

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.

The real self is who you are when you’re at home, when you’re comfortable, and the false self is what you’re pretending – and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you’re within.

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.

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.

When you have a lot of fake selves, most of the time it’s because you haven’t had parents around so you try to build characters to protect yourself.

There’s a part in every person that has a fake self. We’ve had this since infancy due to our parents and our upbringing.

[My music] is opposite to fashion.

In fact, I might be confident for the human race because of what the human race has given me. When I was in the street and bars, people always came up to me and said, “Don’t stop, keep going.”

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.

We have the real self and the false self, there’s nothing wrong with them, and everyone has both of them.

When you look at the media and television, and all this Hollywood stuff, you just judge people.

I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it’s quite small and contained.

I wasn’t quite used to writing a diary – I didn’t understand why people did it – but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.

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

When I started writing again, especially when I listened to French music and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I realized that these lots talked about themselves. The greatest artists, they didn’t sing; they only spoke.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

I’m so tough and so bad, I can be humble and lift another guy up.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

If you look at my job, my union card, it says ‘actor.’ It don’t say nothing about celebrity, movie star, nothing like that, and that’s one thing that keeps me humble.

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there’s another dog.

Any top-level athlete, it’s always the same. There’s always that hint of arrogance there… It’s hard to be humble when you’re the best.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

I’m humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me.