I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

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.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn’t have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

I’m totally myself.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

If you can’t hear me, it’s because I’m in parentheses.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

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.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.

If you ever go to a music session, you’ll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they’re reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

Tell the children the truth.

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

Coffee is a language in itself.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

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

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

When I think of the love I feel for each member of our family, I sense, to a slight degree, the love that our Heavenly Father bears for His children.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

I like it when someone tells me ‚I don’t agree.‘ This is a true collaborator. When they say ‚Oh, how great, how great, how great,‘ that’s not useful.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

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

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.