I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

A good song never gets old.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

I make good music for long journeys.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

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.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

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

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

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.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

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.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

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.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

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

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

A chorus is not easy.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

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 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 don’t just listen to rap.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

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

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

I love to play. And fortunately, I don’t know a lot of musicians that suck. I know a bunch of really good ones, and they’re always up for playing.

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

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. 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.

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

I just want to keep writing music.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

Doing music to pay bills is an uncomfortable situation. I never wanted to be in that situation.

Music is always a commentary on society.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.