I can dance to just about anything.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Once I get on a puzzle, I can’t get off.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music.

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

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

Life is a song to me.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever – was write novels.

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

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

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there’s music in the air there.

I believe in singing.

I hate the idea of genres.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I’m loving to do. And if that doesn’t happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I’ll have my high heels on.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

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

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

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.

Mother Earth is very talented. She has produced Buddhas, bodhisattvas, great beings.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

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

I’m a painter in sound.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Obviously this song is an achievement for me in my career, but what makes me really feel good is to make Latinos feel proud. To provoke that pride that a pop figure and someone so big in music globally like Drake would sing with me completely in Spanish and create this hit ‚MIA.‘ That’s the best part of it.

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‚tap-dancing to work.‘

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

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

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.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.