I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

He who has felt his own ruin will not imagine the case of any to be hopeless; nor will he think them too fallen to be worthy his regard.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

I wrote a song with Ed Sheeran that was kind of spontaneous.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

It’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

She’s a total professional, a diva, a mega-star, not just in music but in the entertainment industry. You always learn from the greats, and J.Lo is one.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

I’m so thankful for the Internet because actors and singers and performers now have a way to connect with their fans on a very personal level which I think is quite special.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

I can’t read the newspaper without crying. I’m easily affected by horrible events, you see.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn’t make me feel good at all.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

Michael Jordan changed so much in basketball, he took his power to make a difference. It’s so much going on in music right now and somebody has to make a difference.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

HartBeat Productions is a company established by me; it’s mine. I run it. I have employees.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

I think ‚Dirty Harry‘ was probably sensitive toward the victims of violent crime.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.