But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

There’s something about pulling out a real tape from a shelf and looking at it and knowing that ‚Everlong‘ is on it, or ‚Best of You‘ is on it, and it’s really special.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

No, I can’t do rap music!

When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.

‚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.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

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

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Where love is, there God is also.

Hope is the magic carpet that transports us from the present moment into the realm of infinite possibilities.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

Always do whatever’s next.

I hope that people around the world will be as inspired as I am to step up and to speak out on behalf of girls around the world who struggle to go to school.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

A chorus is not easy.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

In the future, you won’t buy artists‘ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of ‚their‘ works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

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.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

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

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

My career as Nipsey Hussle is based on my life as Ermias Asghedom.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

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.