A song is anything that can walk by itself.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

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

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

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.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

I make good music for long journeys.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

Nobody is my boss.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

I really love Linkin Park, and I loved Chester Bennington, and it is horrible what happened to him. I grew up listening to him because my dad would make these mixtapes with a lot of different artists – Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, The Beatles, Sarah McLachlan, I just really loved Linkin Park, and their production is really sick.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

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

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

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

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I believe in singing.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I tell my fellow reggaetoneros, keep giving it your all and bring more creativity.

I’ve dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

I write music every day.

I do have tatoos, and I do wear leather, but there are other sides of me, that my film express.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

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.

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.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

A woman can’t be alone. She needs a man. A man and a woman support and strengthen each other. She just can’t do it by herself.

Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

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