I’m the king of the anthems.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands.

I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

‚House of Balloons‘ was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

All of my music is honest.

Kindness and faithfulness keep a king safe, through kindness his throne is made secure.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

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.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I’ve never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

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.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

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

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

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.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

I’ve dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.

I love good, loud speakers.

I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

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.

‚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.‘

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

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

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can’t afford to own it. So it isn’t really part of their life in the way that music can be.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

How I love David Bowie.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

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.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.