I don’t like to feel like I’m in a club when I’m in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

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 try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

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.

I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.

I was 14, and I fell in love with Pink Floyd.

I’m a painter in sound.

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

A chorus is not easy.

Because you have things like ‚American Idol‘ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

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

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

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.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

Even as a kid, I wore J.C. Penney plain-pocket jeans because they were plain pockets. I didn’t want anybody’s name on my backside. I personally don’t like to wear clothing that is named for somebody or has someone’s likeness all over it.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

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

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

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

I hate the idea of genres.

We pay attention to every demographic in every country, so we’re going to focus on building things that teens are going to like, and we’re also going to focus on building things that other folks are going to like.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

I’ve never eaten a strawberry in my life. I have no desire to do that.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

I don’t like talking to celebrities.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

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.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

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