Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.

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

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

You can stroke people with words.

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

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.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

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

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

While discipline and freedom seem like they sit on opposite sides of the spectrum, they are actually very connected.

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

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’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

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.

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

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

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.

I wanted to only create a great perfume, not any perfume that would sell, but a great artistic one that the fans would not feel cheated by.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

I listen to music all day every day. I can’t not listen to music. It’s kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it’s what I love, and it’s all I care about, so I’m good with it.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We’re in a very self-destructive state where we’re addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music.

I’m very active on social media and see the huge impact it has on engaging with fans and being able to have a voice.

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

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.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

Every time I come to Europe, I’m just as excited as I was my very first time, which was many, many years ago. I love that part of the world, and I especially love the fans.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.