I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

Although I’ve been living in the British Virgin Islands for some time now, I have never stopped caring passionately about the U.K. and its great people.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

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.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

When you’re one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

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.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

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 do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

When ‚Paul’s Boutique‘ came out, I was one of the fans that didn’t get it.

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

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

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.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

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

I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.

My music is a luxury.

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

WWE is a space where I thrived, and I loved, and I still do. I love connecting with an audience; that is the greatest thing about going back to WWE.

The New Testament says nothing of Apostles who retired and took it easy.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

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

I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I’m a ham for this stuff.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

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

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

People say ‚I want to be rich‘. The question is, ‚Are you willing to do what it takes?‘

I believe that I’m one of the best in the world at what I do, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.