Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

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

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

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

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

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

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

I hate the idea of genres.

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

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax.

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

I’ve been on tour since I was 16, and I always do meet-and-greets before and after shows, so you kind of build these friendships with people. I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what’s going on in their love lives.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

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

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

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.

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.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

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 love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

A fool is wise in his eyes.

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.