Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it’s a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

I am rather inclined to silence.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

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.

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

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

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.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

In Puerto Rico we dance to everything.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

We’re a blip in the existence of the universe, and we’re constantly trying to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other.

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.

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

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

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.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

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

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

I listen to music all day every day. I can’t not listen to music. It’s kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it’s what I love, and it’s all I care about, so I’m good with it.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could have produced the human molecule.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.

How I love David Bowie.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

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.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.