I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

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.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I always wanted a great love affair: something that feels big and full, really honest, and enough. No moment should feel slight, false, or a little off. For me, it had to be everything.

Be as you wish to seem.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

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

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

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That’s an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can’t cheat real connection. It’s built up slowly. It’s about trust and time.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

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

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

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.

Beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won’t like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it’s based on femininity.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

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.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

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 have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

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

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

The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

The worst crime is faking it.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

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

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

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

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.