All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

I think a lot of things that are the norm, that are very systematic, don’t work.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

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?

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don’t think there are any stones left to unturn.

Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

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

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Whenever you do something, people try to re-do it and do a better version, especially if they’re in another country.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

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

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

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

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

I invented the cordless extension cord.

With tech companies, whoever’s the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, ‚Is this the end of them?‘ And – there’s more – more times people think that’s the case than it really is the case.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

I’m interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you’re like, ‚Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?‘

Because you have things like ‚American Idol‘ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

After launching the first version of Facebook for a few thousand users, we would discuss how this should be built for the world. It wasn’t even a thought that maybe it could be us. We always thought it would be someone else doing it.

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

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

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.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

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

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now, we’re going to bring multi-touch to the market. And each of these revolutionary interfaces has made possible a revolutionary product – the Mac, the iPod and now the iPhone.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

This revolution, the information revoultion, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now?

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

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.