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 think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

I like Cardi B!

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

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

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.

I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn’t want to have some contrived composition.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

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

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

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

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

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

Life is a song to me.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

There is spontaneity to my work.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

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.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

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

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.

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

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

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

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.