John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

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

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

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

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

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

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

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.

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

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‚Did you hear about?‘ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

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.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

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.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

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

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.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

I was 19 or 20 when The Beatles were at their peak, and I was coming up to the peak of my career, too. I was also the first footballer to have long hair, and that’s how I got my nickname ‚the Fifth Beatle.‘

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

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.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She’s sort of become my fairy godmother.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

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.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

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

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.