Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

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

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

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.

We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.

A Khaled record is always the best.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

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

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

The wealth of information now available at the click of a finger amazes me.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

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

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

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

I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‚over the Internet.‘

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

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.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

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 was 14, and I fell in love with Pink Floyd.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they’re much more open.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

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.

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

I love movement. I love moshing.

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

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

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

An operatic voice is like no other.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.