If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

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.

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

I’m always asked, ‚What’s the secret to success?‘ But there are no secrets. Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

Irrespective of whether you have talent or not, one has to work hard. Just being talented doesn’t mean anything; you can end up wasting it before you realize.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

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

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

I always make my dreams into goals.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

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

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 father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

Passion is needed for any great work, and for the revolution, passion and audacity are required in big doses.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

Surface R&B doesn’t work any more. The whole heartthrob thing, songs about unrealistic love and tearing your shirt off every show – that’s not really where it’s at any more. It’s becoming harder for those guys to sell records, and harder for them to succeed.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

I’m at peace with what I’m doing, I feel good with what I wake up doing and about my lifestyle.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

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!

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

An operatic voice is like no other.

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases.

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life.

When schools flourish, all flourishes.

I was saluted by Alex Ferguson when I was subbed and that made me very happy.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.