Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there’s music in the air there.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.

I once went on the most grueling radio tour. Living in hotel rooms, sleeping in the backs of rental cars as my mom drove to three different cities in one day.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

I’ve always been a bit of a gypsy.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

Honolulu is a melting pot.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

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

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

I am confident I will set foot again in Tibet in my lifetime.

When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places.

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

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

Once music ceases to be ephemeral – always disappearing – and becomes instead material… it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.

My music is influenced by L.A. culture.

I remember I was flying home to Los Angeles one day. I was talking to the woman next to me and the flight attendant tried to tell me I was sitting next to somebody that I should know. I didn’t recognize her but it ended up being Beyonce’s sister, Solange Knowles.

I love movement. I love moshing.

Paris is always a good idea.

I never go anywhere. I do sketches and make phone calls, and people visit. It’s more fun to come to Paris.

I’m not saying that people should stop flying. I’m just saying it needs to be easier to be climate neutral.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

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

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

I love Africa, and Ulusaba, our home in South Africa, is pretty special. It’s on a rocky hill overlooking the bush, and from your room, you can see lions stalking zebras by the waterhole.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

I want to give people a taste of the Caribbean, and show them the fun side of me.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

The Indians on board said that thence to Cuba was a voyage in their canoes of a day and a half; these being small dug-outs without a sail. Such are their canoes. I departed thence for Cuba, for by the signs the Indians made of its greatness, and of its gold and pearls, I thought that it must be Cipango.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

I’ll stay in Memphis.

When you’re on the road and moving city to city, when someone isn’t there at the end of the night, you feel empty.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

I never listen to ‚Nevermind.‘ I haven’t listened to it since we put it out. That says something.

I greatly enjoyed the Hawaiian Islands. They are a real little paradise in spite of the influx of Americans who have made it one of their most pleasant ‚centers of resort‘: the soft climate and luxuriance of the tropics; the greenness, the fragrance, the flowers – extraordinary flowers covering the tallest trees and turning them into huge bouquets.

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.