It’s a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that’s a good thing.

Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.

I write music every day.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.

I feel it’s my job to continue being a student of music if I want to continue being an artist and a producer of other artists. You have to keep filling your mind with other music. You have to be ahead of the curve.

I put together amazing records, whether that’s finding the beat or putting the right hook on there, and picking the right artists on the record. That’s me being an A&R. And I’m making sure that they give me their best.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

I always have to be writing.

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

I made that first record in 2008, alongside the EP, but my label at the time waited three years to release it. They thought maybe someone bigger would buy it, but they didn’t, so in the end they just released it themselves.

I don’t have anything to say about other people’s art and their work.

I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

Since I was old enough to understand what a songwriter/producer is, I’ve had a curiosity about how Max Martin creates what he creates. I wanted to see that happen. I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn from him.

I work with my brother Finneas, and he produces all of my music in his little bedroom in our house. We actually tried renting out a studio for a month when we were producing ‚Don’t Smile at Me,‘ but it was really hard there, and we ended up just doing it at home anyway.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

I would love to work with Eminem, Dr. Dre. I wish I could have been in the studio with Bob Marley.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That’s the biggest risk I’ve taken so far.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.

Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.

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

I’m a studio rat.

A producer gets the whole vision done from top to bottom, to making the record to having the record delivered to the world. That’s a producer.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I want to produce the music to a movie that I’m working on, like what Prince did with ‚Purple Rain.‘

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn’t see a space in which we could get anything together.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

I have certain signatures, certain cutting principles. It could be a raw-edged seam; it could be leaving the lining of sheepskin exposed so it’s not perfectly finished. I invent new ways to do it, but the end goal is always the same.

I have taken taking my music to labels for years, and everyone just thought it was creepy. They thought the images with the music were weird and verging on psychotic.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

I love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

All I do is make music.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

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