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

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I’m just more sexually attracted to women. But I’m really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

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.

Music is something no one can control.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

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.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

I like Cardi B!

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

I’m sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

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

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands.

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.

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

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

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

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

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?