I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

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.

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

Music is really driving my whole life.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.

A chorus is not easy.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

‚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.‘

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I’ve got my cardio people – so it’s anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song ‚Tightrope,‘ that’s a good cardio song. And then I’ve got Sting. I’ve got Mary J. Blige. I’ve got The Beatles. I’ve got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

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.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

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!

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

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

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

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.

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.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

There’s Madeleine, and then there’s ‚Madeleine Albright‘. And I sometimes kind of think, who is this person? Once you become ‚Madeleine Albright‘ it doesn’t go away.

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

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

I don’t just listen to rap.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

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

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.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

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.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

We’re constantly striving for success, fame and comfort when all we really need to be happy is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.