Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

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

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

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

I draw pleasure in governance, in doing new things and bringing people together. That pleasure is all I need from life.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

I’m here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn’t make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

Rap was my drug.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

I make good music for long journeys.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

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.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

My life has been very full.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

My music is a luxury.

I’ve been fortunate to have had the life I had prior to Hollywood. I wasn’t starving; I was going to eat the next day.

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.

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.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Children make your life important.

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.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.