I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

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.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

I don’t intend to stop making 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.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

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.

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 went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

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

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‚artist‘ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

I love good, loud speakers.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

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

I always wanted to do what my brothers were doing. I always wanted to play the games they played and play rough and wear pants and go outside.

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

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

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.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

I’ve been a huge fan of Chris Martin forever; it’d be awesome to work with him. He’s really kind, and he’s been really encouraging when we’ve met.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

What I’m hoping is that every album I’m going to do will give my audience something different, and that they’ll grow as I do.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.