I feel it’s my job to continue being a student of music if I want to continue being an artist and a producer of other artists. You have to keep filling your mind with other music. You have to be ahead of the curve.

Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.

I made that first record in 2008, alongside the EP, but my label at the time waited three years to release it. They thought maybe someone bigger would buy it, but they didn’t, so in the end they just released it themselves.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

It’s not enough to train today’s workforce. We also have to prepare tomorrow’s workforce by guaranteeing every child access to a world-class education.

I spend just as much time on how people hear my music as I do the actual music, no matter how long it takes. I’m such a visual artist as well that it always goes hand-in-hand.

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There’s a lot of places left to go.

Literally wrote ‚Starboy‘ in 30 minutes.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.

I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.

A producer gets the whole vision done from top to bottom, to making the record to having the record delivered to the world. That’s a producer.

It’s a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that’s a good thing.

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.

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

I made the track ‚Si Tu Novio Te Deja Sola‘ before I met Balvin.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

There are times when I feel like I’m a traveling minister. I’m trying to go out and get kids to pick-up yard sale instruments and change the world.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

I work with my brother Finneas, and he produces all of my music in his little bedroom in our house. We actually tried renting out a studio for a month when we were producing ‚Don’t Smile at Me,‘ but it was really hard there, and we ended up just doing it at home anyway.

I read every book there was on jazz, about the original players – King Oliver, Buddy Bolden and all those groups. At one time I was fairly well schooled in that… I could tell you who played where and when, historically, way before my time.

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’ve been in continuing education programs since taking my dance master’s exam at age 21.

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

I put together amazing records, whether that’s finding the beat or putting the right hook on there, and picking the right artists on the record. That’s me being an A&R. And I’m making sure that they give me their best.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.

I could care less about the particular. I like to make music.

I have taken taking my music to labels for years, and everyone just thought it was creepy. They thought the images with the music were weird and verging on psychotic.

Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.

By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

My brother had written ‚Ocean Eyes,‘ and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way – if you can’t dance to a song, it’s not a song.

I think you’re working and learning until you die.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

I’m a studio rat.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

We’re making the music that the people are asking us for.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

I’ve known for years that the university underserved the community, because we assumed that university education is for 18- to 22-year-olds, which is a proposition that’s so absurd it is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone ever conceptualized it. Why wouldn’t you take university courses throughout your entire life?

Education is what you learn after you leave school.

I’ve got nothing against records – I’ve spent my life making them – but they are a kind of historical blip.

When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That’s the biggest risk I’ve taken so far.