If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

Demonstrate to the world, there is ‚No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy‘ than a U.S. Marine.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

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

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

Music is in my DNA!

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

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.

Latin music is universal.

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.

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.

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.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

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

Ever since the beginning of rock and roll, there’s been an Axl Rose. And it’s just boring. It’s totally boring to me.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

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

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.

I don’t think President Trump is a racist.

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

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

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.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.