At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

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

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

You do projects with the hope they will be big and hope they will go beyond what you imagine.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

I had this dream, and I really wanted to be a star. And I was almost a monster in the way that I was really fearless with my ambitions.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

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

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

I love movement. I love moshing.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

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

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.