Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

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.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I’d go back to Virginia.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

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.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

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.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

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

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

I think Mozart’s operas ‚The Marriage of Figaro‘ and ‚Don Giovanni‘ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

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

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

A Khaled record is always the best.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

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

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.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

Once music ceases to be ephemeral – always disappearing – and becomes instead material… it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.

No, I can’t do rap music!

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

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

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.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

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

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

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’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

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.

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

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.

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