“We’re all competent in different ways, we’ve just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.”

I think it is all about creating characters, mixing them up with the stars and the light-years, and coming back to Earth, because we’re from this universe. We’re not just New York or London; we’re stars.

Composing was more difficult than writing things down.

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.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it’s totally wrong.

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.

You can’t judge people by their cover.

William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician.

Happiness is overrated and money can’t justify it.

I like it when cities are melancholic. When it started snowing for example, I felt very lonely. I felt very comfortable and very relaxed. When that happens, I write. So I’ve been writing, not a lot, but I’m inspired everyday.

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.

There’s this really awesome theory of human motivation – that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything.

Hope is such an important component to moving forward and getting past the difficult times.

As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

To handle the economy and services in a country like Iraq requires delegation of authority and the choice of competent people.