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

Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

I really love Linkin Park, and I loved Chester Bennington, and it is horrible what happened to him. I grew up listening to him because my dad would make these mixtapes with a lot of different artists – Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, The Beatles, Sarah McLachlan, I just really loved Linkin Park, and their production is really sick.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

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 was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

Lord Jesus, we come just as we are; this is how we came at first, and this is how we come still, with all our failures, with all our transgressions, with all and everything that is what it ought not to be, we come to Thee.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove – disapprove of their point of view.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

I don’t have a problem with Hulk Hogan. People say things and do things, and who am I to judge?

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

I will meet my countrymen. I understand only one language: that they are my countrymen, they are my brothers. You may see with whatever colour you want; Modi will not go into that colour.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

Because I was suspicious of the traditional Christian church, I tended to tar them all with the same brush. That was a mistake, because there are righteous people working in a whole rainbow of belief systems – from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters to charismatic Catholics.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

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

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.

It’s very fun to be the hunter of the sounds. The hunter of the right energy. And it’s not really about if every sound is correct; it’s more the energy – if it hits you in some way, it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s not perfect. I’m still very excited while hunting for songs.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.