Life is a song to me.

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

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

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

There is nothing permanent except change.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

My life is not unlike Truman’s. I can’t go anywhere.

The fame isn’t important to me. It’s a blessing to have. Having so many people that support me, that love me and listen to my music, is beautiful.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

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

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

For me to talk with Obama and the conversation I had with him, I was letting him know that me and my fans have a special connection, and it’s love, and I believe that love is the answer.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

I’m an iPod person.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.