“I was very rebellious, but my family was strict Christians – they would ask us, “What’s the shortest verse in the Bible?” and I was the one who always said “John 11:35” straightaway. It stayed with me, the Bible has stayed with me.”

I loved English literature – if didn’t it would have been hard – but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines.

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 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.

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 decided I got to say whether I was Christian or not, and so I’ve relaxed enormously since then. I’m the one who gets to say that, and not someone else.

False self is an identity based on what you have, what you do, and what others think about you. In stark contrast to this is the true self in Christ, which is who we are before God and in God – Christ living in us, as Paul put it to the churches in Galatia.

Worry about tomorrow steals the joy from today.

No one can claim to be called Christian who gives money for the building of warships and arsenals.

I never meant to marry. In my opinion, a woman born in the last half of the nineteenth century of the Christian era suffered from enough disadvantages without willfully embracing another.

The Christians seized all the maize the locals of Nicaragua had grown for themselves and their own families and, as a consequence, some twenty or thirty thousand natives died of hunger, some mothers even killing their own children and eating them.

The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.

Legalistic remorse says, “I broke God’s rules,” while real repentance says, “I broke God’s heart.”