‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

When you’re thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

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.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

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

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

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

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.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

It’s very fun to be the hunter of the sounds. The hunter of the right energy. And it’s not really about if every sound is correct; it’s more the energy – if it hits you in some way, it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s not perfect. I’m still very excited while hunting for songs.

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.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

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.

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

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.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

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.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

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

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

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.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

Contention does not usually begin as strife between countries. More often, it starts with an individual, for we can contend within ourselves over simple matters of right and wrong. From there, contention can infect neighbors and nations like a spreading sore.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

‚Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age‘ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

By very conservative estimates, Turkish repression of Kurds in the 1990s falls in the category of Kosovo. It peaked in the early 1990s; one index is the flight of more than a million Kurds from the countryside to the unofficial Kurdish capital, Diyarbakir, from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish army was devastating the countryside.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.