Quotes on ID

I'd much rather wait till my material is up to par, in my opinion, than rush it just so I can stay in the limelight a little longer.

I'd love to do a duet, always wanted to work with Madonna, but she never asked.

When I was15 years old, I couldn't look at the NFL and look on TV and say, 'Boy, there's a head coach, African American. That's something I'd like to do.'

Think about what you're passionate about. I did not learn something early enough: if I could go back, I'd tell the younger me that there's a big difference between loving to work and loving the work.

One good thing I'd like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much better wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger - it's not directed at the person you're currently with.

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.

Fiction writers tend to err either making people more than they are or less than they are. I'd rather err on the side of the former.

I couldn't remember when I'd stopped willing to be trans and started wanting to be trans. If there were a difference, I'd forgotten it.

I wanted to be the best street fighter in Houston, Texas. And I thought if I got a trophy or two, I'd go back home, and everyone would be afraid of me. I had one fight in '67, the first one. In '68 of October, I was an Olympic gold-medalist, a dream come true, with a total of 25 boxing matches.

I'd like to see what fraction of things that chemists have figured out we could actually teach nature to do. Then we really could replace chemical factories with bacteria.

If I'd been living in Berlin in 1933-34, could I possibly have foreseen the Holocaust and all the corollary horrors of World War II? And if I had, would I have done anything about it? I also started to wonder: how does a culture slip its moorings?

I've always been impelled to say the truth. When I was 14, in 1954, I already wrote a gay novel, though I'd never read one. I felt that life handed me a great subject, gay life, that had scarcely been examined, and I was impelled to record it in all its strange detail.

I appreciate my journey, but I don't want that for my kid. Not any of it. It has nothing to do with whether I liked my childhood. I really did. But as a parent, that isn't the childhood that I'd provide.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!

I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me because it's not their profession to do that.

I've always felt that if I examine myself too much, I'll find out what I know and don't know, and I'll burst the bubble. I've gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I'd rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

If I hadn't given my money away, I'd have had more than anyone else on the planet.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I'd get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.

You're never the same after you run the Iditarod, and I still lust to go out and run with dogs, even though I know that I shouldn't. But I'd give just about anything to be able to do it again. To see the horizon again from the back of a dog team would be wonderful.