There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

I never listen to ‚Nevermind.‘ I haven’t listened to it since we put it out. That says something.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

A ‚scream‘ is always just that – a noise and not music.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

I own a ’66 Jaguar. That’s the guitar I polish, and baby – I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I’m an iPod person.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

How I love David Bowie.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.