I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

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

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

This healthy eating stuff, it’s here to stay, and we now have everything we need to seize the opportunity and give all our kids the healthy futures they so richly deserve.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

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

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

When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

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.

My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

All of my music is honest.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

I want kids. I want a soccer team, and I want a husband.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

Philosophy is the highest music.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

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.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

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

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

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.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

Music is really driving my whole life.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

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

Rap was my drug.