When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.

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 never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

No, I can’t do rap music!

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there’s music in the air there.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

I’m living a dream I never want to wake up from.

Music is really driving my whole life.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

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

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

I own a ’66 Jaguar. That’s the guitar I polish, and baby – I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd.

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

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

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

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

I hate the idea of genres.

But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

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

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

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.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

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

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

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.

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

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

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.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

I had to get rich so I could sing like I was poor again.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.