Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

I can dance to just about anything.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

I want my fans to love themselves. It’s almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

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.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

No, I can’t do rap music!

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

I believe in singing.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

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

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

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

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

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

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

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.

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

The signing of the Sex Pistols was a turning point for Virgin. It put the company on the map and, over the years, attracted bands such as Genesis, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, and Janet Jackson. It also attracted Culture Club, who were ground-breaking.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.