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.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Because we’re actors we can pretend and fake it, but I’d rather the intimate investment was authentic.

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

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.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

The real lover is the man who can thrill you just by touching your head or smiling into your eyes – or just by staring into space.

I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community.

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them. One day I put a post on Facebook that said, ‚God is not mad at you.‘ Within a few hours, we literally had thousands of positive responses from people saying things like, ‚That is exactly what I needed to hear today.‘ Obviously, this is a message we need to hear.

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.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

I’m an iPod person.

I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

I don’t keep people around me that aren’t family. You don’t get to stay. Unless you’re eating at the table with us, you’re not part. We eat together, we cry together, we live together, we die together. Everything that we do is for each other, and we care for another.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

Be as you wish to seem.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

I’m not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it’s so that people really know what Bad Bunny’s about.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

The internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.