I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

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.‘

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

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.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

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.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

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.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

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 became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

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.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

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

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it’s a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

I’ve taken countless shots in my life, so you know the ones when you’re in rhythm, with a perfect release, and it’s on track, that it’s going in.

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

All of my music is honest.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

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’ve rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.

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.

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