‚Jolene‘ has been very popular all of these years, even overseas.

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

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

I’m the king of the anthems.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

My whole life, I’ve sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I’ve had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

I’m an iPod person.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

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

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

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

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

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 like to read books. I like to listen to music.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

I hate the idea of genres.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language; then, hopefully, it’s a success.

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.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

A chorus is not easy.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.

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

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

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.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

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

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

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

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

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.