For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

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

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

If you consider the definition of authenticity, it’s saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

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

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I’ve used my femininity and my sexuality as a weapon and a tool… but that’s just natural.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

I believe in singing.

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

Where thou art, that is home.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

I’m totally myself.

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

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

People have so much going on in their heads. I’m like, If you could write a song, you’d feel so much better!

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

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.

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.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.