Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

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.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

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.

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

My imagination is a twisted place.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

I think Mozart’s operas ‚The Marriage of Figaro‘ and ‚Don Giovanni‘ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

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

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

I think that promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification.

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.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

I just want to keep writing music.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

The concept of commercialism in the fashion and art world is looked down upon. You know, just to think, ‚What amount of creativity does it take to make something that masses of people like?‘ And, ‚How does creativity apply across the board?‘

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.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

I’m an inventor.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

I made all my generals out of mud.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

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

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.