I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

A ‚scream‘ is always just that – a noise and not music.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

You learn a lot from traveling around.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

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

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Knowledge is power.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

Mastery, I learned, was not something genetic, or for a lucky few. It is something we can all attain if get rid of some misconceptions and gain clarity as to the required path.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

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.

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Some people, they take their form of working out as a religion that they think is better than everyone else’s. I’m not like that. If you have a better way to work out, and you can teach it to me, and I find it to be useful and gets me in better shape, I’m all about.

When ‚Paul’s Boutique‘ came out, I was one of the fans that didn’t get it.

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

I can express myself.

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

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.