Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

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

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

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

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

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

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

I like Cardi B!

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was 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.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

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

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

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

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

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

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

Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

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 think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

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

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

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

There was a time Michael Jackson couldn’t get his video on MTV because he was considered to be ‚urban.‘ The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break down the doors for everyone who will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

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.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

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.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

Obviously this song is an achievement for me in my career, but what makes me really feel good is to make Latinos feel proud. To provoke that pride that a pop figure and someone so big in music globally like Drake would sing with me completely in Spanish and create this hit ‚MIA.‘ That’s the best part of it.

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.

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.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?