I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

I’ve dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Nicki Minaj, I’m at MTV. I’m going to be honest with you: I love you. I like you. I want you; I want you to be mine. Only reason I’m not telling you this face to face is because I understand that you’re busy.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

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

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

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

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Music is really driving my whole life.

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

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

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.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘