I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

I have always hated bowling, and I don’t mind admitting it.

How I love David Bowie.

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don’t think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

I supported Donald Trump.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

Music is always a commentary on society.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

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

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 taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

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

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

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

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

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.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

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.

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

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

If somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

I think Mozart’s operas ‚The Marriage of Figaro‘ and ‚Don Giovanni‘ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

Not only do I think being nice and kind is easy but being kind, in my opinion, is important.

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.