I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

I make good music for long journeys.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

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

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

We will naturally pursue our goals on the strength of our own resources, skills and enterprise. But, we know that we will be more successful when we do this in partnership with the world.

We walk together, we move together, we think together, we resolve together, and together we take this country forward.

Ever since I was a kid, this was all I wanted to do. I’ve wanted to do music. I wanted to sing. It’s all I know.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

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

I don’t think of Kurt as ‚Kurt Cobain from Nirvana‘. I think of him as ‚Kurt‘. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

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.

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

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 think love is one of the purest things you can sing about. One of the best things you can sing about.

My whole life, I’ve sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I’ve had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.

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

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

I like Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business together.

Rap was my drug.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

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.

We have a great group of guys that really sacrifice every night, care about each other, and try to play the right away.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I listen to music all day every day. I can’t not listen to music. It’s kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it’s what I love, and it’s all I care about, so I’m good with it.

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.

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.

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

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

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I’ve always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I’m a sucker for it, whether it’s Linkin Park or Little Richard.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.