I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinner table and talk to them about their mother who has cancer or their child who is struggling in school, and their fears about watching their lives go by, I think we’re all the same.

There’s been a lot of talk about Jack White wanting to work with me, and I’ve always admired him, and of course, he lives in Nashville, too.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

We was able to become real successful in the mixtape space.

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

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 have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Real living is living for others.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

I think it is a sin to look at another person as inferior to yourself because of race or because of ethnic background, and I think the greatest thing to do is to pray that God will give you love for them, and I do.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.

If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

Even before Snapchat, you go back into my career from Day One or interview people that knew me for 25 years, they’re going to tell you I’ve been DJ Khaled my whole life.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

Respect the burden.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

Streaming is a really big market for me. We’ve been doing great in the streaming market, so it’s not something I want to alienate at all. Streaming counts now. They’re treating artists the way we deserve to be treated.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

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

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

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

We are all alike, on the inside.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

When I give somebody something and see their face, it just makes me so happy.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

Never find fault with the absent.

I’m so thankful for the Internet because actors and singers and performers now have a way to connect with their fans on a very personal level which I think is quite special.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.