I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

I’m not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it’s so that people really know what Bad Bunny’s about.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

A good song never gets old.

I’m a painter in sound.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

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

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I am a great fan of science, but I cannot do a quadratic equation.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

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.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there’s no fitting into it now.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I’d go back to Virginia.

I never listen to ‚Nevermind.‘ I haven’t listened to it since we put it out. That says something.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

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 get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

The effect of music on fashion has been immense, especially hip-hop and urban music.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

I’ve always been a fan of the VMAs, and I’ve always worked hard just to get a ticket to go to the VMAs.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

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.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

As an entrepreneur, as an investor, I’m trying to be as educated as I can to where the progression of technological capability is going and what it does to these different categories that, me as an artist and an influencer, I can get involved and bring value.

‚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.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

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.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

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’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.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

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

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

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.

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.

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.