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.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

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

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

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

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

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

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.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

I’ve made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I’m allowed to write my own music.

I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

A ‚scream‘ is always just that – a noise and not music.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

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.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

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

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

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it’s a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

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.

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.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

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

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

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.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

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

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

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.