I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

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.

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.

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

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

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

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

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.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

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

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

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.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

I’m a day-to-day-type person.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

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.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

Time is more valuable than money, because time is irreplaceable.

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.

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

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.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I’ve never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

You just don’t know when you get in the editing room what you will need as a link or a tool for a transition. If you’re in a room, and there’s a kettle boiling, get a shot of it. Don’t worry if people think you’re nuts.

The one thing I regret was that my work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

I’ve spent too much time giving speeches, traveling the world.

I put out tapes, but I always kept saying, ‚Why am I putting all this energy into these tapes?‘ I was like, ‚I’d rather make just an album because I have a vision; I know how I want to do my records.‘ I always felt like an artist as well.

I don’t have anything to say about other people’s art and their work.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?