Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

The quote-unquote ‚description‘ of a leading man was once your tall, handsome man with the build of whatever, almost a trophy to some degree. I think now it’s about making a leading man what you want a leading man to be. In this day, you can’t deny talent. You look at Jonah Hill, you look at Zach Galifianakis, you look at myself.

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.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

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

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‚Marathon‘ or ‚All Money‘ or ‚Crenshaw‘ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

Rap was my drug.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

Let the path be open to talent.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

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.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

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.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

A Khaled record is always the best.

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

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.

I resent the implication that I’m less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

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

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

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

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

I like Cardi B!

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

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don’t know how to do it, and wouldn’t be any good at it if I did, so I’m going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

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

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.