For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

Science is magic that works.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

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

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB… I listen to it all. When I’m not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don’t think about batting, or which bowlers I’m going to face.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

I guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.

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.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

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 think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

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

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.

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.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

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.

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

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.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Never regret what you don’t write.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers. Our regulatory environment has not been encouraging to research, innovation and enterprise.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.