Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

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.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

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.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

My whole life, I’ve sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I’ve had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

The Middle East is hopeful. There’s hope there.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

It take many a year, mon, and maybe some bloodshed must be, but righteousness someday prevail.

Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there’s no fitting into it now.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.

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

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

Satan wants us to constantly focus on everything that is wrong with us and look at how far we still have to go. But God desires for us to rejoice in how far we have already come.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

I love good, loud speakers.

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

Every day is a gift from God, no matter how old we are.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

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

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

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.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

The British people know that, given strong leadership, time, and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.