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’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

Malcolm X was the first political person in this country that I really identified with. If he had lived and not been purged, I probably would have joined the Muslims.

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

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

I don’t like to feel like I’m in a club when I’m in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

A lot of the stuff I do in terms of PR, I learned it from Muhammad Ali.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

It would be great to be 105 and still making films.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

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

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

Every man should know, if you’re comfortable and you like it, you should do it. Everyone always worries about what the girls think, what the guys think. If you like it, do it.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

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.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

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

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I think love is one of the purest things you can sing about. One of the best things you can sing about.

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.