‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

In art the best is good enough.

I’m very picky; I’m never happy with anything. It’s so hard to give the record away and accept that you’re done.

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

The people in my songs are all me.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

Music is something no one can control.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

I hate the idea of genres.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

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

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

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

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

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.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I’m not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it’s so that people really know what Bad Bunny’s about.

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

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.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

George Carlin’s album, ‚Class Clown,‘ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

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

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‚Marathon‘ or ‚All Money‘ or ‚Crenshaw‘ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

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 like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.