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

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

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.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

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.

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

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

I love being in a courtroom.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

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

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

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.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

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

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

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

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

My music is influenced by L.A. culture.

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

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.