I don’t like to feel like I’m in a club when I’m in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.

I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

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.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

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

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

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

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

I’m well past the age where I’m acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you’re not going to get played on radio and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

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?

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

I just want to keep writing music.

I personally don’t like to go see romantic comedies. But people do want to see them, and they seem to want to see me in them.

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

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

If McLaren give me a car, that’s fine, but I don’t tend to buy fancy stuff anyway or super-nice clothes.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

I’ve never eaten a strawberry in my life. I have no desire to do that.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

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.