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

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

Writing ‚We Are Never Getting Back Together‘ was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

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

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

A chorus is not easy.

‚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.‘

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

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

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

All art is but imitation of nature.

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

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

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

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.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I’ve got my cardio people – so it’s anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song ‚Tightrope,‘ that’s a good cardio song. And then I’ve got Sting. I’ve got Mary J. Blige. I’ve got The Beatles. I’ve got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Never regret what you don’t write.

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

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.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it – though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, ‚I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.‘

I have the space and liberty to create.

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.

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.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

I really love Linkin Park, and I loved Chester Bennington, and it is horrible what happened to him. I grew up listening to him because my dad would make these mixtapes with a lot of different artists – Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, The Beatles, Sarah McLachlan, I just really loved Linkin Park, and their production is really sick.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

I’m a serious aficionada of country music – Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I’ve even written some songs. They haven’t done anything of mine yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.

Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

Music is like film to me.