“I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.”

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.”

“Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.”

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; / I lift my lids and all is born again.”

“Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.”

“Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, & ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.”

"It isn't where you came from, it's where you're going that counts."

"The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own."

"You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining."

"Always be smarter than the people who hire you."

"As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise."

"No one can figure out your worth but you."

"When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed its point."

"You're gonna have to learn to get out there in front of those cameras and hold your head up. Take charge when you're singing!"

"Wrinkles are hereditary. Parents get them from their children."

"You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music."

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

"You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live—now."

"In the long run, you make your own luck—good, bad, or indifferent."

"When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don't even notice.”