I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

I just was never into performing. It’s just hard work. It’s hard work.

I love having an unlimited supply of cocoa butter.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

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.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you’d quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I don’t know who I would have been if I never watched MotoGP.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

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

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

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

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

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

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Music is something no one can control.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

Life is a song to me.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

I was a sociology major. And it had nothing to do necessarily with law, which is ultimately – I went to law school. But what I tried to do was choose something that I was passionate about or something that I cared about.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

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

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

I like to be in control of how I look and how I feel and how I act.

I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it’s a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

You have enough people against you… be for yourself.

I got my own back.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

Phish and Dave Matthews really know their audiences and really treat them well.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.