Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

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

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

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

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

My imagination is a twisted place.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

There is spontaneity to my work.

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to ‚get‘ any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

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

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

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.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

I’ve been a huge fan of Chris Martin forever; it’d be awesome to work with him. He’s really kind, and he’s been really encouraging when we’ve met.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

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.

A chorus is not easy.

I like being a writer.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

A Khaled record is always the best.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

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.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

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

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

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.