I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

A ‚scream‘ is always just that – a noise and not music.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

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.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

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

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

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I never listen to ‚Nevermind.‘ I haven’t listened to it since we put it out. That says something.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

You do projects with the hope they will be big and hope they will go beyond what you imagine.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

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.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.

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

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

I knew I wasn’t going to be a rocket scientist – let’s not be fools – but I wasn’t going to be a bum.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‚Marathon‘ or ‚All Money‘ or ‚Crenshaw‘ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

I like pushing boundaries.

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

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

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

Look at Pusha-T. He makes a certain type of rap music. ‚Daytona‘ is that on the highest level.

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’m trying to do what Eddie Murphy did for his generation. You have to show people, ‚I’m different. I’m not just a comedian.‘ I’m trying to become a rock star.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.