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

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

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

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.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

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 lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

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

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

Music is something no one can control.

Once music ceases to be ephemeral – always disappearing – and becomes instead material… it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.

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

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

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

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I’d become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It’s the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

I’m an iPod person.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

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.

If music be the food of love, play on.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

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

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.