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

It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have in life, there’s nothing I need to do other than cricket. If I want to achieve whatever I thought as a kid, I need to work hard and not let it go to waste.

I’d love to do a duet, always wanted to work with Madonna, but she never asked.

I don’t have many friends; I’m very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated, and I’ve never been really close to anyone.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

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

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

People think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.

Dancers are always striving for perfection. A great dancer never achieves it: you always want to do another turn, a higher jump,a more difficult acrobatic jump.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

It’s what counts, isn’t it, on the Sunday, rather than pre-season testing. If you lock up, you do a little mistake, it’s nothing, but if you do it on Sunday, you lose a place or you have to box for a flat spot or something like that. It’s a much bigger problem.

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.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

All I do is make music.

I don’t really like talking. I like to execute. I’m not a talking person. I’m an action person.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

I wanted to write.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

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.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

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

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

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’m a very private person. I don’t go out much. I’m home with kids. I go to work. I don’t really like being the focus of attention, which is why I like being behind the camera more.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

I just love working with Eminem. He’s just one of my favorite rappers, and his lyrics – he’s a true poet, and I enjoy that about him.

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.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

‚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.‘

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

I like to work.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

I love movement. I love moshing.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn’t believe in.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.