I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

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.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

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

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

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

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

I don’t consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.

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

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

If music be the food of love, play on.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

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.

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.

So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

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

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

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

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.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

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

Basically, I live to do gigs.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

The only thing wrong with the NBA – or any other professional sport, for that matter – is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

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

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

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.