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

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

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

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

I’m the king of the anthems.

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

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

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

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.

Music is in my DNA!

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

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

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.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you’ve ever talked to that dude, he’s the sweetest guy in the world – he’s just a trip.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

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.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

I’ve made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I’m allowed to write my own music.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

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.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

I can dance to just about anything.

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

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.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

Freedom is not enough.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

A precedent embalms a principle.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

A right delayed is a right denied.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

I am a just man.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.