It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

The people in my songs are all me.

When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine… before she realizes she’s reading.

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

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

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

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

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

I love good, loud speakers.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

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

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

I want more of my favorite artists or more of the guy that makes the anthems. I want more.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

I just want to keep writing music.

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 used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to ‚get‘ any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

I don’t think of Kurt as ‚Kurt Cobain from Nirvana‘. I think of him as ‚Kurt‘. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

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.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

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

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

I don’t like to feel like I’m in a club when I’m in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

Music is something no one can control.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.