Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

No, I can’t do rap music!

The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can’t afford to own it. So it isn’t really part of their life in the way that music can be.

Something must be done to save humanity! A better world is possible!

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‚Die Fledermaus,‘ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

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 listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

Because you have things like ‚American Idol‘ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

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.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

Remember, it is not about voting for the perfect candidate – there is no such thing. Presidents are human.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

There’s something about pulling out a real tape from a shelf and looking at it and knowing that ‚Everlong‘ is on it, or ‚Best of You‘ is on it, and it’s really special.

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

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.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

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.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn’t love them.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

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.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

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

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

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.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‚You Are So Beautiful‘ and Eric Clapton’s ‚Wonderful Tonight‘ – songs that go straight to the point.

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