I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

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

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

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.‘

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

Never take anything for granted.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

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

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

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

It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

I don’t want to say anything negative about anybody or anything or anybody’s political beliefs. I’ve never done that. I’ve never tried to get involved in those things.

What I’m hoping is that every album I’m going to do will give my audience something different, and that they’ll grow as I do.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

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.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

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 sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

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.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

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

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

With all due respect, I am against dumb.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

I’ve always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I’m a sucker for it, whether it’s Linkin Park or Little Richard.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

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

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.