Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

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

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

I got a signed document from Bullock’s saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignment. Of course, nobody bought any of them, but otherwise, I was a big success: I had my drawings on sale at Bullock’s!

I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn’t going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I’ve ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn’t want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

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.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

I always teach myself calm and visualization stuff.

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.

Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

A good song never gets old.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

Thanks to Botox and fillers, as well as the work that I’ve already had, my face pretty much maintains itself.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

I never make conscious decisions.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

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

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

I hate the idea of genres.

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.