Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

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.

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

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

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

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.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

I’m a working-class person, working with class.

The day I think I’m not enjoying the game and contributing the way I would like to, I’ll hang up my boots.

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. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there’s music in the air there.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

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

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don’t think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

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.

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

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

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I just love working with Eminem. He’s just one of my favorite rappers, and his lyrics – he’s a true poet, and I enjoy that about him.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

Music is always a commentary on society.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

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

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.

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.

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.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‚You Are So Beautiful‘ and Eric Clapton’s ‚Wonderful Tonight‘ – songs that go straight to the point.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

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.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.