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.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

George Carlin’s album, ‚Class Clown,‘ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

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.‘

I know a lot of people who wouldn’t be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don’t understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

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

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

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

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

I like Cardi B!

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

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’m a painter in sound.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

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

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

Music is in my DNA!

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

I love to play. And fortunately, I don’t know a lot of musicians that suck. I know a bunch of really good ones, and they’re always up for playing.

In Puerto Rico we dance to everything.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

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

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn’t even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

I’m an iPod person.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

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

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

A chorus is not easy.

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.

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.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

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.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

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

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.