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 want my fans to love themselves. It’s almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

I’ve been on tour since I was 16, and I always do meet-and-greets before and after shows, so you kind of build these friendships with people. I have girls come up to me and tell me exactly what’s going on in their love lives.

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.

Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB… I listen to it all. When I’m not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don’t think about batting, or which bowlers I’m going to face.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

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

So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

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.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

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

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

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.

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 have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

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.

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

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

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

No, I can’t do rap music!

I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

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.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

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

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

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

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

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.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

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

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.