I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone – except God.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

I feel Anglo-American.

Only Americans can hurt America.

I’ve never been an intellectual but I have this look.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

We can have no ’50-50′ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you’re enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.

I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Only the shallow know themselves.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.