I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I’ve always been like that; I don’t smile in any pictures.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

Bitterness is cancer – it eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

You can stroke people with words.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

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

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

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.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

I’m not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it’s so that people really know what Bad Bunny’s about.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

People are underestimating the force of angry kids.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I don’t think of Kurt as ‚Kurt Cobain from Nirvana‘. I think of him as ‚Kurt‘. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

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

Why should poetry have to make sense?

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

I would say that jazz is my own language.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

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.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

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

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.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.