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

Once music ceases to be ephemeral – always disappearing – and becomes instead material… it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14.

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

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.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

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

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

I love good, loud speakers.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

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

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

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.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

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

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. 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.

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.

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded.

I came here in 1974 to do a play, and then I went to L.A. I really like living in America. I feel more at home here than anywhere else.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

Indeed, we’re strongest when the face of America isn’t only a soldier carrying a gun but also a diplomat negotiating peace, a Peace Corps volunteer bringing clean water to a village, or a relief worker stepping off a cargo plane as floodwaters rise.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

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 just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

I think America has always been polarized.

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

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.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

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

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.