‚Jolene‘ has been very popular all of these years, even overseas.

To me, being the best means proving it in different countries and championships.

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

I wouldn’t wanna go out not looking like the Dolly people have come to know, because I’ve come to know her that way, too.

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.

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.

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

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 love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

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

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.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

I love good, loud speakers.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

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.

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

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

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

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands. I had posters on my wall. I had Beatles records.

My favorite record label of all time is Motown. That era of music was my favorite.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

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

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.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

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

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

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

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

Latin music is universal.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

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

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

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.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

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

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

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