I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

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.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I’ve used my femininity and my sexuality as a weapon and a tool… but that’s just natural.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

No man was ever great by imitation.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

I don’t compare myself to anyone else; I don’t make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that’s okay by me.

Fame may go by and – so long, I’ve had you.

I thought one should have the attitude of ‚What do you care what other people think!‘

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

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.

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

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

Everyone calls me Bruno; they don’t ever call me Peter – that was just my government name.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

I’m on the autism spectrum. I don’t usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.

The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

I’d always tried to resist playing the supervirility thing. I liked showing the vulnerability of age.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

I’m not a sheep.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

I just want to be myself.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.