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

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!

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

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.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I’m loving to do. And if that doesn’t happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I’ll have my high heels on.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

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

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 am prepared to resort to anything, to submit to anything, for the sake of the commonwealth.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

I have been into social work since 45 years, and at an average, every day for one or two hours, I have been engaging in social discourses. It is not a small thing.

I do my job like I breathe.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

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

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

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents‘ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

I can dance to just about anything.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple.

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!

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

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

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Dancers are always striving for perfection. A great dancer never achieves it: you always want to do another turn, a higher jump,a more difficult acrobatic jump.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

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.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I’m a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

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

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.