I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

Don’t make me into this airy-fairy, moralist, idealist because I’m not.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

I’m inspired by Walt Disney. I’m inspired by Howard Hughes. I’m inspired by Henry Ford. I’m inspired by Steve Jobs. I mean, I’m inspired by James Perse.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

I only act from my heart.

I am an introvert; privately I am very shy, and I don’t speak unless I have to.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

Hatred is settled anger.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

I do believe in God. But you won’t find me visiting temples every now and then. I believe in self-realization. Peace of mind matters a lot to me. What’s the point in doing something just for the sake of it? I’d rather do something I like doing as long as I’m being true to myself.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

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

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

Fear is real, but so is love.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

There’s no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don’t try to adapt it, make it commercial.