I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

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

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

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.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

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.

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.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

Phish and Dave Matthews really know their audiences and really treat them well.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

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.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

Since the departure of good old-fashioned entertainers the re-emergence of somebody who wants to be an entertainer has unfortunately become a synonym for camp. I don’t think I’m camper than any other person who felt at home on stage, and felt more at home on stage than he did offstage.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

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

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

I think – I don’t know, maybe it’s nostalgia. But the choice, losing the choice to be able to use film is going to be – it’s gone. It’s going to be gone.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

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

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

My purpose is to make exciting music, and I feel like I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, so there’s no pressure.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

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

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.