I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.

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!

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.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

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 could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

Fans are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve never been the type of artist who has that line drawn between their friends and their fans. The line’s always been really blurred for me. I’ll hang out with them after the show. I’ll hang out with them before the show. If I see them in the mall, I’ll stand there and talk to them for 10 minutes.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

Latin music is universal.

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.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

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

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band.

When I see grace in a woman, that’s very sexy. You can tell by how someone moves or their rhythm.

Obviously this song is an achievement for me in my career, but what makes me really feel good is to make Latinos feel proud. To provoke that pride that a pop figure and someone so big in music globally like Drake would sing with me completely in Spanish and create this hit ‚MIA.‘ That’s the best part of it.

I’d love to do a duet, always wanted to work with Madonna, but she never asked.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

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.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

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.

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

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

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

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

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. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

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

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

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

I’ve rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.