Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

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.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

I can dance to just about anything.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

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.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

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.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

No, I can’t do rap music!

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‚You Are So Beautiful‘ and Eric Clapton’s ‚Wonderful Tonight‘ – songs that go straight to the point.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.