I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

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.‘

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn’t even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

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.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

Music is really driving my whole life.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

I make good music for long journeys.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

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

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

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

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

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

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.

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

‚Kiss Land‘ is the story after ‚Trilogy‘; it’s pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it’s very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, ‚Why Japan?‘ I simply tell them it’s the furthest I’ve ever been from home. It really is a different planet.

Music is always a commentary on society.

I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

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.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

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

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

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

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

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

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.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

It’s very fun to be the hunter of the sounds. The hunter of the right energy. And it’s not really about if every sound is correct; it’s more the energy – if it hits you in some way, it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s not perfect. I’m still very excited while hunting for songs.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

It’s important to love in hip hop.