Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

One element of Madonna’s career that really takes center stage is how many times she’s reinvented herself. It’s easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It’s inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don’t think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

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.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Any man who has had the job I’ve had and didn’t have a sense of humor wouldn’t still be here.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

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

I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.

I listen to music all day every day. I can’t not listen to music. It’s kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it’s what I love, and it’s all I care about, so I’m good with it.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

Music is something no one can control.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

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.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

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

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

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

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

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

Latin music is universal.

It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‚Marathon‘ or ‚All Money‘ or ‚Crenshaw‘ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story.

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

The fame isn’t important to me. It’s a blessing to have. Having so many people that support me, that love me and listen to my music, is beautiful.

I knew I’d be in the UFC since I started my career.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

There has to be something in every role that interests you.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

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 think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I hate the idea of genres.