I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

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.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

I’m not trying to be fashionable. Never was!

I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

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

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

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

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

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

My music is a luxury.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

Integrity means that you are the same in public as you are in private.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

Phish and Dave Matthews really know their audiences and really treat them well.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

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.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

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.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

No, I can’t do rap music!

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

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?

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

I don’t need you to be funny. I don’t want to be entertained.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.