Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there’s no fitting into it now.

I’m happy that I have my family, and I’m happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing’s changed, really.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

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

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

I’ve always liked older ladies, ever since my mother would have B’nai B’rith at our house.

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 have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

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

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

Since the beginning, it was just the same. The only difference, the crowds are bigger now.

So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

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 whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.

I never needed much, and I never thought I’d get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

I was adored once too.

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.

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

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.

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

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

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

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

I don’t listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It’s all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You’d have an entire story in song. I never listen to, like, white music – I couldn’t sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

I think Mozart’s operas ‚The Marriage of Figaro‘ and ‚Don Giovanni‘ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

‚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.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

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 hate the idea of genres.

It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‚Marathon‘ or ‚All Money‘ or ‚Crenshaw‘ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

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.

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

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

I like today and perhaps a little future still, but the past is really something I’m not interested in. So, as far as I’m concerned, I like only the past of things and people I don’t know. When I know, I don’t care because I knew how it was.

A chorus is not easy.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.