I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife.

I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story.

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.

If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer.

In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.

As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.

I like gettin' old.

Christianity made us think there's one heaven.

Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?

My mother answers all my fan mail.

My sunglasses are like my guitar.

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.

Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.

Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.

I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.

Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.

I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife.

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

Let's just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

People have the power to redeem the work of fools.

I never thought I was gonna live to 30.

No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.

Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.

When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

A day doesn't go by where I don't create something.

A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester.

All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.

An artist wears his work in place of wounds.

Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it.

As I go through life, I can see why my mother directed me that way, or why my father counseled me in that way. But some things you're open to when you're young, and some things you need to find out for yourself. I think that that's pretty universal.

As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.

As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.

As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.

Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man. The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.

C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?