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

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

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.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands.

When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

My earliest realization of the stir of national life was the torch parade in the Garfield campaign. On that occasion, I was not only allowed out that night, but I saw the lamps being filled and lighted.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

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

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

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.

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.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

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

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

I’ve been on tour since I was 16, and I always do meet-and-greets before and after shows, so you kind of build these friendships with people. I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what’s going on in their love lives.

Power means happiness; power means hard work and sacrifice.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

‚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.

I used to really love Fiend, but he stopped. He just stopped. Every time he had a project, every project – ‚There’s One In Every Family,‘ ‚Street Life‘ – I had to have them. And he just stopped. And that was disappointing, ‚cause that was my favorite rapper at one time.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

An operatic voice is like no other.

Liverpool people are famous for liking clothes and fashion; they are very social and lively people, and we know that they like clothes.

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

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 believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

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.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

I have a cult-like following because I exemplify what it is to be a human being.