Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

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

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

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

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

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

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

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

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

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.

Tell your wife often how terrific she looks.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

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.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

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

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

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.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

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

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

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

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

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

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

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

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

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

It feels good to have your work respected again.

‚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.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.