When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.

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.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

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.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

Whatever you do, do with all your might.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

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!

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.

I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.

Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth the effort for end users, however much fun it is for nerds like us.

I explain the law of compensation like this: ‚Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I just want to keep writing music.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

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.

There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.

When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

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

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

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

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

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

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

My priority is cricket. Everything that I get apart from it is a result of the effort on the field. Everything else follows. I am pretty aware of my priorities, and I don’t really focus on things that are not as important to me as cricket.

When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.