I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I make good music for long journeys.

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

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

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

‚Jolene‘ has been very popular all of these years, even overseas.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

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

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

Those outside the church expect followers of Christ to live differently, yet today many in church are chasing after the world – not to win them, but to be like them.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

I don’t know who I touch and who I don’t. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know the reasons I’ve been so well received.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

I’m sticking to the script, I’m putting that organic feeling back in the game.

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

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

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

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 kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

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.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

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.

Music is really driving my whole life.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

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

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.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

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 push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

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’m a painter in sound.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.