Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

Music is really driving my whole life.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

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

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

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.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

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

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I draw pleasure in governance, in doing new things and bringing people together. That pleasure is all I need from life.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

An operatic voice is like no other.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

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

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

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

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.