It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there’s no fitting into it now.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

It’s very fun to be the hunter of the sounds. The hunter of the right energy. And it’s not really about if every sound is correct; it’s more the energy – if it hits you in some way, it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s not perfect. I’m still very excited while hunting for songs.

Nothing can come of nothing.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

According to Lifetime, I don’t know anything about TV.

The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

Music is really driving my whole life.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

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

I know a lot of people who wouldn’t be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don’t understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

We are so very ‚umble.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

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.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

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

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

‚Best Man Holiday‘ was a very successful film.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

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.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

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.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

A good song never gets old.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.