Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

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.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

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 enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

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

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

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.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

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

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 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.

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

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.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

You go to a festival, you know you’re not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I’ve made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

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.

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

I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

All of my music is honest.

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

Doing music to pay bills is an uncomfortable situation. I never wanted to be in that situation.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

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.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

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

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

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

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

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

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.