I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

If you consider the definition of authenticity, it’s saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands. I had posters on my wall. I had Beatles records.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

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

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

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

We just think that there are all these different ways that people want to share, and that compressing them all into a single blue app is not the right format of the future.

Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

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 still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don’t do things to shock people. I’m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. So while I’m here, I might as well make the most of it.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

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

Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

Video is growing very quickly on Facebook. A lot of people compare that to YouTube. I think that kind of makes sense. YouTube isn’t the only video service, but I think it’s the biggest, and it probably makes more sense to compare Facebook video to YouTube rather than Netflix because that’s a completely different kind of content.

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.