I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Music is always a commentary on society.

And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it.

As a producer, as a CEO of Hartbeat Productions, I am making deals to put my company in place to win, to put my staff to work so that while all this stuff is going on, they’re in the kitchen cooking. So it’s understanding the longevity of the entertainment business; you get out of it what you put into it.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

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

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

How I love David Bowie.

In the end, everything is a gag.

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.‘

When ‚Paul’s Boutique‘ came out, I was one of the fans that didn’t get it.

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

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

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.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I’ve never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

I know a lot of people who wouldn’t be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don’t understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

I’ve been on tour since I was 16, and I always do meet-and-greets before and after shows, so you kind of build these friendships with people. I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what’s going on in their love lives.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has.

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.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

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

What a blast it is to be here with Michael Moore.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.