If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I’d follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I’ve been very lucky.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

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 even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

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!

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

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.

I make good music for long journeys.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‚Runaway‘ music video. Something inside me clicked, like, ‚That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.‘

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

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

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Energy begets energy.

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

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

I’m trying to throw a big broad net to try to get people interested in God and believe that He’s for them and has a purpose.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.