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’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

Without Cambodia, I may never have become a mother. Part of my heart is and will always be in this country. And part of this country is always with me: Maddox.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I’ve had moments when I’ve thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there’s some vibration, some connection.

I’m different from any other designer, businesswise, in that I’ve built this company up and I own it. I never had business hype behind me to promote my image… My image is real… I have never had marketing people telling me what to do.

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

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

We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.

Obviously this song is an achievement for me in my career, but what makes me really feel good is to make Latinos feel proud. To provoke that pride that a pop figure and someone so big in music globally like Drake would sing with me completely in Spanish and create this hit ‚MIA.‘ That’s the best part of it.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

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.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

When you walk into my classroom, I’m going to give it to you straight, just like in the real world, because that’s the only way to prepare you for the real world.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn’t allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn’t do anything with my classmates.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

It’s always fun to talk about jazz.

I’ve sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don’t need sauce. I know he doesn’t even want you to pour sauce. And I’ve seen customers come in and do that, and I’ve seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I’ve seen him die a little inside.

I think it’s an Irish thing. We don’t really care. We say it as we mean it, and you have to deal with it. The truth is the truth.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

The Joker that Christopher Nolan created in ‚The Dark Knight‘ had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that’s how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it’s a totally different story.

I want my fans to love themselves. It’s almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

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

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.