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.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

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.

I want my fans to love themselves. It’s almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

Latin music is universal.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

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.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

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 just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

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.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

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

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

If music be the food of love, play on.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

Music is in my DNA!

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.