I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

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.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

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

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that’s something we’re proud of.

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

I really wanted to break the mold of what modern touring is right now.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

I think I do myself a disservice by comparing myself to Steve Jobs and Walt Disney and human beings that we’ve seen before. It should be more like Willy Wonka… and welcome to my chocolate factory.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

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

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.

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.

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

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.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

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

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

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.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.

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.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.